
Class /.iId £^^6S 
Book ■V\/^ 
Copyright W. 



COBnRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Common Sense 

in 

School Supervision 



CHARLES A. WAGNER 

Superintendent of Schools 
Chester, Pa. 




DWXE - MllWAllKEP 



The Bruce Publishing Company 

Milwaukee, Wis. 



v/3 



Copyright 1921 
The Bruce Publishing Company 



MAY -4 1921 

0)CLA611903 



INTRODUCTION 



These chapters on Supervision of Instruction have 
grown out of classroom experience and out of super- 
visory experiences of all kinds; routine supervision, 
conferences of teachers and supervisors; conferences 
of supervisors and superintendent ; public lectures and 
private discussions of the principles of supervision; 
actual experimentation with the supervisory practices 
herein recommended. 

If speaking from experience be regarded a valid 
reason for speaking at all on a subject, then these chap- 
ters have the fullest possible warrant ; thirty years of 
practicing, of speaking, and of writing the ideas pre- 
sented. 

The order of presentation has been determined by 
experiment. Following the discussion of a topic dif- 
ferent groups of persons were asked to tell, "What 
question about Supervision of Instruction arises from 
the discussion just ended?" Either a unanimous or 
a majority opinion would then choose the topic which 
is next treated in the text. Thus the order of the 
chapters is entirely a psychological order. 

A closely consecutive reading of the chapters may 
arouse the feeling that certain ideas have been stated 
more than once. Usually the restatement seemed nec- 
essary to complete the discussion of the topic under 
consideration and was, therefore, made unhesitatingly. 
Usually, too, the desire to make a lasting impression of 
the ideas repeated was part of the actuating motive. 
Moreover, the restatement is always a new statement. 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

The wish of the author has been that the order of 
presentation and the unbiased treatment may lead to 
two definite results: First, interest, sympathy, and 
enthusiasm for the right kind of supervision ; second, 
clearness and adequacy of perception of the relations 
discussed. If these two hopes shall be realized even 
to a slight degree, the writer will feel fully repaid for 
his "labor of love" in writing these chapters. 

Chas. a. Wagner. 
Chester, Penna., December 15, 1920. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I — Do Teachers Like Supei'vision? 7 

II — Supervision of Instruction in Operation 19 

III— The Supervisor 26 

IV — The Teacher: Supervision an Irritation 38 

V — The Teacher: Supervision an Inspiration 42 

VI — Invigoration of Instruction Through Supervision. . . 48 
VII — Self-Supervision by Teachers: What Supervision 

Is Not 60 

VIII — Supervision of Instruction by a Teaching Principal 68 
IX — Supervision of Instruction: The Special Teacher- 
Supervisor 72 

X — Ethical Relations of Supervised and Supervisor of 

Instruction 88 

XI — The Personal Versus the Professional Attitude 

Toward Supervision 97 

XII — Supervision of Instruction 107 

XIII — Supervision of Instruction: Growth of the Teacher 

and Supervisor 131 

XIV — Supervision of Instruction and the Grading of 

Teachers for Efficiency 141 

XV — Why Supervision of Instruction Is Necessary 154 

XVI — How May the Visit of the Supervisor Be Made 

Profitable and Most Enjoyable? 168 

XVII— Who Shall Rate the Superintendent? 174 

XVIII — A Few Unsolved Problems of Supervision of In- 
struction 179 

XIX— What Two Teachers Think of Supervision 189 

5 



CHAPTER I. 
Do Teachers Like Supervision? 

About all the knowledge obtainable on this topic is 
a series of individual opinions, mostly the opinions of 
teachers who give expression to their dissatisfaction 
with supervision as they have experienced it. No sta- 
tistical study appears to have been made at any time. 
Obviously it is impossible to give the statistical reply. 
The mere existence of school supervision in cities, in 
towns, in counties, and in even smaller school units, is 
not a proof that teachers like supervision nor that they 
believe in it, even if this wide prevalence be admitted 
as proof that somebody believes supervision of instruc- 
tion a necessity. 

Starting from the purely individual basis the state- 
ment seems warranted that some teachers like super- 
vision and say little about it, and others do not like it 
and proclaim their dislike to all the world that will 
lend a listening ear. Experience proves the truth of 
this assertion, whether statistics have or have not been 
gathered. Of any teaching corps under consideration 
it will probably be found that some teachers like one 
supervisor, some another supervisor. Few supervisors 
are liked by all their teachers, and similarly, probably 
few supervisors are disliked by all their teachers. 

The use of liking or disliking as terms at once dis- 
closes the fault in the relation; it is expressed in a 
term that shows the feeling to be personal rather than 
professional. Professional difference would be ex- 
pressed in "disagreement" or an equivalent term. 

This being so, what is indicated ? That supervision 
should be abolished? Supervisor and supervised must 
rise above personality to the professional level, and 



8 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

must meet each other in their teaching relationship in 
the impersonal, judicial, professional attitude which 
the judge on the bench feels for the accused. No pure- 
ly personal consideration should be allowed to enter 
into the relationship of supervisor and supervised. 

The advancement of the pupil is the single end 
aimed at by teacher and supervisor. Both and each 
must see in supervision the effort to secure unity, se- 
quence, completeness of instruction, and equality of 
opportunity for each child. The constantly changing 
requirements of education, changes within the school 
system, entrance of new teachers into the system, and 
the application of newer pedagogical truths, each and 
all require that a system of schools be directed by a 
single intelligence. 

If each teacher chooses for her classes what shall 
be the course of study, chaos and disorder will ensue 
in the system. All other considerations are secondary 
to the demand for unity, continuity, sequence of in- 
struction and for equivalence of opportunity for all 
the children of a school system. 

Probably no other demand would be strong enough 
to sustain supervision against the opposition of some 
teachers and their friends and against the clamors of 
directors and taxpayers because of its high cost. The 
objections to supervision as voiced by some teachers 
should clear the way for a considerate treatment of 
objections and appraisement of the commendations. 
From the notes of an acting superintendent the fol- 
lowing objections have been extracted as typical. 

"/ ivas caught unprepa7'ed. What I did is not a fair 
example of my real work." Generally such a state- 
ment is entirely true. That a good teacher might make 



CONDEMNATION VS. FAILURE 9 

it and not be deserving of condemnation can be quite 
frankly admitted. That will be no condemnation of 
supervision nor of the supervisor any more than it is 
of the teacher. The supervisor judges what he sees. 
He calls what he sees by its real name, but takes cir- 
cumstances into consideration. If not fit nor at her 
best, the teacher has a right to say so. Probably it 
would have been better for the teacher not to go to 
school that day, and yet she can not be severely blamed 
for taking a chance if the entire supervisory system 
is on a chance basis. Having undertaken to teach in 
her condition of fatigue or non-preparation, she has 
assumed all responsibility for the work, and she now 
has left to her merely the right to offer an explanation 
in justification of her course. 

No right to condemn supervision can possibly be 
drawn from having taken the chance and lost. The 
supervisor may accept the explanation and treat it as 
an extenuating circumstance. If the teacher does not 
seek to excuse herself for poor work every time that 
supervisor comes, the teacher will be given the benefit 
of a lenient judgment. It is only repeated and con- 
tinual excuses for not doing well by a teacher that dis- 
pose the supervisor to conclude that the teacher has 
an unawakened sense of responsibility and is making 
an inferior effort. No teacher can fairly nor continu- 
ously base her objection to supervision to a claim that 
it is disclosing her slackness ; that would be confession 
and self-condemnation. 

If the teacher really feels that she has been caught 
unprepared, she should at once request a special visit 
from the supervisor at a fixed time to do similar work 
and thus demonstrate that she is capable of more sue- 



10 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

cessful teaching. Every professional spirited super- 
visor will be very ready to consent to such an arrange- 
ment. If under such a prearranged trial the teacher 
does good work, she has given the supervisor sufficient 
reason for excusing the first shortcoming, but she has 
also shown that the supervisor will be right in the fu- 
ture if he demands that the teacher key herself up to 
good work all the time. 

The outcome of the arranged trial has demonstrat- 
ed that not lack of ability but absence of steady and 
even determination was the real shortcoming. For 
such a shortcoming there can be no permanent excuse, 
and the supervisor will be justified in refusing to ex- 
cuse repetitions of the fault. Put into language 
stripped of "polite fiction" this objection means, **Su- 
pervision prevents loafing on the job." 

'7 get fairly sick on the days when I know a super- 
visor is coming and dread to go to school." This is a 
clear case of misunderstanding and of maladjustment 
to the purposes of supervision. The teacher thinks 
the supervisor a spy. When supervision and criticism 
of practice have become an integral part of the train- 
ing of all young teachers, such an expression will never 
be heard from a teacher in service. If the experiences 
of the training course do not deter so sensitive a soul 
from becoming a teacher, they will accustom her to the 
process and will give her a taste of the benefits of su- 
pervision to the earnest and striving teacher. 

The teachers who raise the loudest and most re- 
sentful objections to supervision are usually those who 
have taught longest. These teachers of long experi- 
'ence know certain textbooks in certain subjects, and 
they may know children better than the supervisor. 



EXPERIENCED TEACHERS 11 

Therefore they suppose they do not need supervision, 
especially should they be excused from supervision by 
a mere "chit" of a girl who has just graduated from 
the normal school. 

When forcibly and vehemently iterated and reit- 
erated, this contrast between the experience of teacher 
and supervisor does appear to favor the teacher's ex- 
pectation to be free from supervision. Notice, please, 
the statement says "appear to favor." It is pure ap- 
pearance, no more, no less. Really the mature woman 
with her wealth of teaching experience believes that 
because of her experience she can win and hold the 
children to conformity, to effort and to obedience. 

If the point be conceded, has the case been lost for 
supervision? Has it been lost even for the young su- 
pervisor just fresh from the normal school? If the 
experienced teacher had wisely directed some of her 
energy and had prudently used her opportunities for 
growth and breadth of knowledge, she should and 
would now be the supervisor in place of the young 
graduate. If with all her fine experience she failed to 
grow, and just went on year after year doing what 
she did each previous year, she has shown her inherent 
incapacity to become a supervisor, a leader, and has 
equally proved her need of supervision, which has 
among its foremost duties to carry the newer and bet- 
ter to teachers who otherwise fail to secure them. 

Moreover, if the experienced teacher grew at all 
but failed to attain the growth needed to become super- 
visor, she will surely have grown enough to be able to 
appreciate as supervisor a person who has had a broad- 
er training and a wider outlook than can be acquired 



12 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

in a single grade or school or subject in any number 
of years. 

The experienced teacher who chafes under a com- 
petent "young" supervisor is more than likely the one 
who rested satisfied with her attainments when she 
too was a young graduate, and she now resents super- 
vision on "personal" grounds, although perhaps rather 
unready to admit this. Because her way has been re- 
garded successful so long, she does not admit any need 
for trial of new ways. This state of mind is the best 
reason for supervision. 

The child under instruction is living now and must 
go into the world of to-morrow. His work must face 
the future. As against the children, no teacher has 
any right to demand that she be permitted to continue 
her plan and methods just because she is familiar with 
tliem and dislikes the discomfort of a readjustment. 
The school is supported for the child, and it is the busi- 
ness of the school to fit the child for the future and to 
enable him to fit into that future as a participating, 
contributing unit. Baldly put this objection says: 
"You have no right to disturb my slumbers." 

Objections of teachers to supervision on the ground 
of their own greater experience have as much right 
to consideration as would the same teacher's claim to 
be allowed to go on teaching out-of-date textbooks in 
history and geography because she is already familiar 
with them. 

If we do not excuse the teacher from revising her 
knowledge of facts as facts change, why shall she be 
excused from changing her plans or her methods, even 
if the changes be directed by a young supervisor ? The 
chances are that the longer the teacher has been in 



HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS 13 

one place doing- the same work, the more necessary is 
supervision. If such a teacher has grown regularly 
and constantly, she may not need supervision so much 
as she will be glad for it, since it is sure to bring new 
knowledge and suggestions for further growth. 

"/ am so glad on the days when no supervisor comes 
to visit my room." This may be a very fair cause for 
rejoicing. If supervisors follow each other through 
the rooms of a building in an almost constant stream, 
then the rejoicing is warranted. Without conceding 
any reality to this objection to supervision, it may be 
admitted as a justified objection to haphazard or to 
unregulated routine of supervisors' visits. We must 
even admit that no one knows anything authoritatively 
as to the right frequency of supervisors' visits. There 
are both rules and opinions about it, but practically no 
facts. 

Whether a particular supervisor should come once 
a month or once a week has not been experimentally 
determined, nor whether more than one supervisor 
should visit a teacher in one day. Teachers are very 
certain they do not want two a day, nor do they want 
to have one supervisor each day of the week. This re- 
joicing on the day when no supervisor comes is then 
the expression of the teacher's feeling that she wants 
some days in which her pro|>Tam need not be dis- 
arranged, nor her plans spoiled. If supervisors' visits 
are arranged and timed with that purpose in view, 
the routine of procedure will be much smoother. 

The nature of the study or branch supervised, the 
temperament of teacher, pupils and supervisor, the 
training and experience of the teacher, and other con- 
siderations must be reckoned with in making out the 



14 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

schedule of visits. Generally the determining factor 
of frequency is the calendar divisions of weeks and 
months ; that is, so many visits per week or per month. 

If not one supervisor each day, what does seem a 
justifiable or permissible frequence? As a proposal 
for discussion it would seem safe to suggest that there 
should be at least the time of two school days between 
the visits of any two supervisors and one or two weeks 
between the visits of the same supervisor. To this 
frequence good teachers would not seriously object, 
hence it may be assumed to represent the average opin- 
ion. 

The use of the word opinion discloses the whole 
trouble ; we have opinions but no facts, as has already 
been stated. The removal of the objection, "We are 
supervised to routine staleness," is easy if all the su- 
pervisory work is scheduled and co-ordinated in the 
office of the superintendent. Nothing but that can 
prevent the annoyance of teachers by too much super- 
vision crowded into a short time. 

Supervisors moving as free lances or each making 
an individual schedule to suit conveniences of train or 
trolley are sure to produce the crowding and conflict 
of which teachers complain. A university postgradu- 
ate department should study this problem experiment- 
ally in the supervisory units lying all about the uni- 
versity. 

In that way facts can displace mere opinion. Hav- 
ing admitted all this it is still permissible to say that 
real supervision is not objectionable. Real supervi- 
sion will not crowd the teacher, will not assign two or 
three supervisors to visit the same building and rooms 
on one day, and real supervision can afford to work 



GRADING WORK 15 

according to a schedule so the teacher may know when 
the supervisor is coming. 

"My work is graded successful and another teacher 
who does better work is credited with hut fair results." 
The teacher who makes this statement believes it true, 
of course. The supervisor who sees both teachers con- 
duct the work has a basis of comparison which teach- 
ers lack. Assuming that the supervisor is working in 
true professional spirit, his judgment must be accept- 
ed. The vivacity, the enthusiasm of the teacher count 
for much, hence a mere comparison of lesson plans, 
even if accompanied by a discussion of the contemplat- 
ed plans, is not conclusive proof that the teacher with 
the better plan will teach the better lesson. 

Nor must it be overlooked that the best teachers 
have poor or "off" days. Should the supervisor see a 
good teacher conduct a poor recitation, it will be neces- 
sary to call that recitation poor, or the entire work of 
supervision is discredited. When a supervisor finds 
poor results he must say so. An explanation or even 
a justification of poor work may be possible. It should 
be offered by the teacher and should be considered by 
the supervisor. 

The fact that the supervisor found the work poor 
and said so should root supervision in that teacher's 
professional affections rather than incline the teacher 
to dislike supervision. That on a given day an average 
teacher may be adjudged to have taught more success- 
fully than a more gifted teacher is indubitable evidence 
of the fairness and the competency of the supervisor. 

The teacher who has not received the degree of 
credit which she thinks she deserves, should at once 
ask the supervisor to point out the ways in which the 



16 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

work might have been improved if such suggestions 
did not accompany the supervisor's opinion. To admit 
that supervisors may err is not to condemn super- 
vision ; supervisors have all the frailties of our human 
nature, and are no more infallible than teachers. 

"/ tvish you would give me another trial. Lam con- 
fident that I have done better on days when you did 
not see my wo7'k than I have done today." This is the 
expression of the large-visioned, fine-spirited teacher 
who understands the aims and purposes of supervision, 
who has fathomed the real friendliness of the super- 
visor, and who has on former occasions experienced 
the worth of the advice which the trusted supervisor 
can supply. 

In such a case the supervisor will be glad to sus- 
pend judgment until the next visit, or, if possible, will 
at once fix a time for the demonstration. Some super- 
visors have the notion that it is fair to try to catch the 
teacher in an "off" lesson. There is no ethical correct- 
ness nor professional fairness in that kind of super- 
vision. Supervision is not playing detective. From 
teachers, as from pupils and from humanity in gen- 
eral, we get according to our expectations. If in the 
arranged demonstration lesson the teacher shows that 
she can do very well, both teacher and supervisor have 
reason to decide that in the future only good work can 
be accepted. 

The teacher should not be allowed nor should she 
allow herself to do poor work. Having taught the one 
lesson well and satisfactorily, the teacher has an ex- 
perience which will help her in all future lessons, the 
sense of having succeeded. Here supervision has per- 
formed its proper function, namely, made the teacher 



SUPERVISION JUSTIFIED? 17 

a better and more confident teacher and has pitched 
effort in the key of "success." 

"Come to see me now. I have corrected my fault." 
Like the former, this expression reveals a correct con- 
ception and attitude; the conception that supervision 
is to make the good better, to remedy the remediable, 
to condemn the condemnable ; and the attitude of read- 
iness to co-operate with supervisor for ever better 
work. 

This teacher has worked her way out of her diffi- 
culty and has done it herself; can supervision have 
completer justification? Many teachers under super- 
vision work in this spirit, though it is not always easily 
apparent nor discernible. The beneficiaries are aware 
of their benefits, are quietly grateful and say nothing 
publicly. The malcontents are dissatisfied and are 
ceaselessly telling their grievances. The latter thus 
seem a multitude and the former seem non-existent. 

"The supervisor's judgments of my toork have 
helped me to get my present position." This teacher 
has kept and studied her supervisor's criticisms and 
suggestions. The commendations on the supervisor's 
reports, when shown to the superintendent to whom 
application was made for the new and better position, 
were more effective than the best recommendation 
could possibly have been. 

Did that teacher believe in supervision? Did she 
complain about supervision? That not all nor more 
teachers have such an experience with supervision is 
largely due to the fact that during the process of 
being supervised they behave so differently about su- 
pervision and toward the supervisor. To profit by sug- 
gestions of the supervisor, and to incorporate them in 

2 



18 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

the procedure of instruction and drill would be shrewd 
policy if it were nothing more, but it is more, it is 
open-mindedness, it is the spirit of learning the better 
way, it is the desire to become a better teacher. Is it 
not easy to see and understand why one teacher profits 
by supervision and why another may deteriorate under 
it? 

"Your supervision and your criticisms have made 
me such a teacher as I am." No more generous ac- 
knowledgment can be made to a supervisor, and it is 
more frequently made than either outsiders or teachers 
suppose. Even if such a generous-hearted teacher is 
properly acknowledging the helpfulness of the super- 
visor, helpfulness because the supervisor's faith and 
expectation of good work have been an ever-present 
stimulus to effort, the teacher's reaction to suggestions 
and criticism must also be remembered and taken into 
account. That reaction too was indispensable in mak- 
ing the teacher what she has become. 

The principles of supervision may be unformulat- 
ed, and the practice may not be standardized as yet, 
none the less is there need for supervision, a justifica- 
tion for it, even if present objections and protests of 
some teachers be justifiable. Lifted from the plane of 
personality into the higher regions of detachment and 
impersonality, and maintained on the level of purely 
professional work, conducted in the atmosphere of ju- 
dicial procedure, there is a large field for supervision 
of instruction. These truths are rapidly disclosing 
themselves, and teacher's protests and objections to 
this supervision are mightily opening the way for their 
emergence. 



CHAPTER II. 

Supervision of Instruction in Operation. 

Among the superintendent's duties the supervision 
of instruction is usually counted as one, and in many 
cases it receives but little of the superintendent's time 
and attention. Therefore a statement of the ordinary 
routine of the procedure will be helpful for this dis- 
cussion. Mention must also be made of the fact that 
supervision of instruction is performed as a part of 
the duty of principals, special teachers, and supervis- 
ors of special branches. 

The observance of teaching, criticism and confer- 
ence v^ith teachers for the purpose of the improvement 
of the instruction, is the aspect of supervision to be 
discussed, and the official or person in any school sys- 
tem w^ho performs that duty is to that extent the super- 
visor. Therefore the term as used in this discussion 
may mean any person or official w^ho oversees for the 
purpose of guiding instruction. 

The supervisor is the officer who has charge of the 
work of instruction as a whole, whether it be an as- 
sistant superintendent, a principal, a special teacher 
or the supervisor of a special subject. The officer is 
not absent in the one room school for there the teacher 
is her own supervisor, comparing her work with that 
of other teachers by conversation or by reading ac- 
counts in books and journals. 

Whether the supervisory official has one or the 
other title, actually he is supposed to have had special 
training for the work, to have had long and varied ex- 
perience in it, to have a well-balanced judgment, a^ 
tactful manner and an agreeable, winning personality. 
No office in any organization calls for so much diplo- 

19 



20 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

macy and finesse as the office of supervisor of instruc- 
tion. It requires ability to form correct judgments 
instantly, skill to render the judgment effectively but 
inoffensively if it be unfavorable, and graciously but 
unfiatteringly if it be favorable. The supervisor must 
be the master of the "right word fitly spoken." 

The teacher will need less direction from the super- 
visor if she too has had preparation and experience. 
Whether a recent addition to the staff or whether a 
continuing member of it, the teacher needs especially 
the quality called "open-mindedness," readiness to 
learn. The better her education has been the greater 
the likelihood that the teacher will find it easy to be or 
to become open-minded, and to welcome the super- 
visor's efforts to keep the instruction fresh and the 
methods abreast of every progressive move. 

In fairness to teachers as a class it must be said 
that little difficulty is generally found in securing the 
introduction and adoption of newer ways and better 
plans, if there is a reasonable ground for belief that 
the new is better than the old. The percentage of 
teachers who are open-minded is certainly as large if 
not larger than of supervisors who are open-minded. 

The supervisor is under a double temptation to be- 
come fixed in his mental attitude. He finds certain 
plans working well and becomes unwilling to change 
for fear the new way will not be as good as the old. 
Also the mere fact that he is clothed with final author- 
ity of choice results in his readiness to decide from in- 
clination that he will "let good enough alone." 

The arrangement of supervisory visits becomes the 
next problem. How frequently shall the supervisor 
visit the teacher ? Shall it be once a week, once a month. 



FREQUENCE OF VISITS 21 

once a term or year? Almost every superintendent 
has his work on an individual basis as to frequence 
and sequence of visits. 

The best statement on this point is that of the su- 
perintendent who "visits his teachers as often as possi- 
ble." County superintendents do well indeed when 
they get to see their teachers twice a year or term. 
This variation of frequence of visits shows quite un- 
mistakably that there is no demonstrated frequence 
which is known to be best, and proves, if any fact can 
prove it, that supervisors have not pressed very hard 
to impress boards with the necessity of more frequent 
visits. 

Should supervisors agitate and demand greater fre- 
quence than is now possible, school boards would rather 
readily accede to the request, especially if the greater 
frequence of the right kind of supervisor's visit yielded 
invigorated life and procedure in the schoolroom. Mere 
frequence of visits will not do, but frequence which 
evokes from teachers expressions of approval and of 
desire to see the supervisor more frequently will dis- 
pose boards favorably. Assistant county superintend- 
ents were rather easy to add to the legal machinery 
for supervision after a few counties had proved the 
system advantageous. 

Ideal frequence and system of supervisory visits 
should permit the supervisor to visit all the teachers 
at every hour of the day within the school term, so 
that all of the teacher's work may be observed and val- 
ued, and so that she may be seen at every hour of the 
day. Practically no supervisor can attain this ideal 
frequence, although it is the logical and professional 
limit of frequence and limit to the time variation of 



22 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

visits. To keep this maximum in mind will make it 
easy to see that few supervisors have time enough and 
freedom enough to supervise as they ought and as 
many of them wish to supervise. 

The supervisor visits the teacher's room, notes con- 
ditions of all kinds, observes the work of instruction 
and the direction of seat work and study. From these 
observations many inferences are made as to relation 
of teacher and pupils and as to general conditions of 
the school. Sometimes these observations are noted 
for later reference, sometimes they lead to an opinion 
as to the quality of the work, and this opinion may be 
communicated to the teacher, or it may be reported to 
the board before it is told to the teacher. 

Practice in this matter is as various as are school 
systems and supervisors. In some systems nothing is 
said to the teacher except suggestions of different ways 
of doing the work, impliedly ways that are better. In 
some systems an elaborate list of questions has been 
prepared on a sheet, and the supervisor checks up the 
work on as many as from sixty to one hundred forty 
questions, marking "yes" or "no" or some qualifying 
word which records the supervisor's judgment and 
saves the labor of writing the word. 

Objection is made and has been made to this pro- 
cedure, but say what anyone may, it does inform the 
teacher of the supervisor's opinion, and it leaves a 
tangible reminder of the visit. 

In a few school systems the transmittal of the su- 
pervisor's judgment is further followed up by a con- 
ference between the supervisor and the teacher. The 
conference-after-visit is one of the best ways of mak- 
ing supervision helpful and significant. Did supervis- 



TRANSMITTAL OF JUDGMENT 23 

ors generally recognize this importance and rightly 
esteem its value, we should ere now have had a much 
more insistent demand for time for this conference 
during school hours. 

Mostly these conferences are hurried, are pressed 
into a moment or two at recess or after school. The 
supervisor has no fair chance to make clear what he 
has in mind and the teacher has no time to compose 
her mind to assimilate what the supervisor would com- 
municate. 

Proper supervision will provide school time for 
these conferences and will not impose them as a bur- 
den and expense upon teachers and supervisors. Their 
purpose is the betterment of the teaching and that 
benefits the child. It means that the child's effort shall 
be made more productive and his time shall be more 
profitably spent ; he shall learn more in less time. 

If the conference of supervisor and teacher can and 
will bring such a gain to pass no trouble will be found 
to secure the consent of school authorities to provide 
the necessary relief teachers while the regular teacher 
is called into the supervisory conference. 

In many ways more important than the after-visit 
conference is the before-visit conference, especially 
with teachers who are new in a system or with young 
inexperienced teachers. There is nowhere a condition 
to which the old saying applies more completely than 
this condition of the new and of the inexperienced 
teacher ; here indeed "an ounce of prevention is worth 
a pound of cure." 

The conference preceding the recitation, to discuss 
the teacher's plan and to learn her reasons for the plan 
and its order would prevent many disheartening fail- 



24 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

ures, not only such as the supervisor discovers but 
such as he cannot see, since he is not all-seeing, whose 
effect he finds only after the teacher is thoroughly dis- 
heartened. 

In a vague way the importance of this fact is ad- 
mitted; the teachers' institute before the term begins 
is an admitted declaration that it is better to guard 
against a wrong start than to correct it after it has 
been made. Supervision as an office misses a great 
chance to dignify itself and to magnify its own impor- 
tance if it does not demand time and facilities for such 
conference preceding teaching, with both old and new 
teachers, when new books, new methods, new studies 
are to be introduced. 

The general teachers' meeting will not do for this 
purpose. The individual teacher is almost never 
reached that way. The happiest and most successful 
results can not be attained unless the individual teacher 
is reached and started right. 

The supervisor visits the teacher at work, observes 
operations during a longer or shorter visit, forms an 
opinion as to the worth of the work and passes on to 
another teacher or perhaps to another building. The 
teacher may learn the supervisor's opinion and may 
profit by the visit, or the supervisor may refrain from 
saying anything if he has no corrections to suggest, 
for fear of spoiling the teacher by praise. With tears 
in her eyes a teacher once told her new superintendent, 
"I never knew what Supt. B. thought of my work, as 
he never said anything to me about it," yet Supt. B. 
had invariably declared that teacher to be one of the 
best in his corps. 



OPINIONS FORMED 25 

Many other variations in procedure at each of the 
steps would have to be mentioned if all the forms of 
procedure were to be mentioned. Variety enough has 
been described to make plain that supervision in prac- 
tice attempts to know what kind of work teachers are 
doing and to enable the supervisor to form some sort 
of opinion as to the value of that work. This is not 
nearly all that supervision can accomplish and not 
nearly all that it should accomplish, and with gratifica- 
tion it may be added not nearly all that it is accom- 
plishing in many places under many supervisors. 



CHAPTER III. 
The Supervisor. 

Consideration of actual and possible may as well 
begin at this point. Therefore, what shall be the qual- 
ities and qualifications of the supervisor of instruction 
at any level or of any branch ? 

Misunderstanding is so likely to occur that it seems 
advisable to repeat that supervision of instruction is 
but one of the duties of the superintendent, therefore 
the supervisor may be the superintendent, or the prin- 
cipal, or the special teacher, or the special supervisor, 
or even the teacher herself or an associate teacher. 

The act of observing instruction for the purpose 
of commending what is praiseworthy and of suggest- 
ing improvement of what is improvable is supervision, 
and the teacher comparing her own work with that of 
a fellow teacher for the purpose of finding concurrence 
of procedure and encouragement, or of noting differ- 
ence of procedure and of asking questions about the 
differences so as to find reasons for both forms of pro- 
cedure and thence inferring the better, is really super- 
vising her own work. 

The personal qualities of the supervisor strike us 
first, therefore let us consider them first. Merely to 
repeat the catalogued lists of teachers' qualifications 
would but emphasize that the supervisor must have all 
the qualities of the good teacher, but must have them 
in a higher degree or in a more spontaneously active 
condition. 

As the teacher is a continual model for the children, 
so the supervisor must become a model not only for the 
children but for the teachers also. Kindliness of heart 
and courteousness of manner are a prime necessity 

26 



MANNER OF CRITICISM 27 

for the supervisor, so as to be in immediate sympathet- 
ic understanding of any condition which he may find 
in a school or in a schoolroom. 

There should also be the determinate optimism 
which first appraises the good and then recognizes the 
undesirable or unsatisfactory. The grace of kindli- 
ness of tone and word in suggesting improvement is 
a vast resource for the supervisor. Not softness nor 
unwillingness to condemn quickly what deserves con- 
demnation, nor the absence of a vocabulary of strong 
condemnation for use when justified is meant to be 
described by kindliness of tone and manner. 

The supervisor who radiates encouragement is the 
warm spring sunshine which starts life into activity. 
The purely critical supervisor is the wintry wind which 
chills and numbs life and activity. Each effect of su- 
pervision may be present or absent when all other as- 
pects, attitudes and processes of the activity are ideal- 
ly correct. The manner, the disposition of the super- 
visor to help, to encourage, to cheer should be con- 
sciously active right in combination with the resolve 
to see faults corrected and wrong procedures righted. 
These qualities are not incompatible. 

Results of supervision as seen under both sets of 
circumstances are as entirely different as spring is 
different from winter. In supervision we want a per- 
petual spring, an undying hope and aspiration for the 
better based on the good already achieved. 

For a very definite reason the supervisor has been 
spoken of as "he," and the teacher as "she." A long 
continuous discussion like a book on supervision re- 
quires definiteness in terms to save time and space by 
reducing unnecessary words and round-about phrases. 



28 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

There is no reason inherent in supervision, however, 
why the supervisor must be "he." In primary grades 
and in special subjects the supervisor is much more 
frequently "she." Nearly all teachers are "she," hence 
the propriety of confining the "she" to teachers and of 
reserving the "he" for the supervisor. 

For very good reasons the feminine side of the 
house has been given the exclusive supervision of the 
primary grades. For the same reasons all primary 
teachers are women. Woman has the maternal atti- 
tude toward childhood, that is the ministering, the 
relieving or the helping attitude rather than the shield- 
ing and the protective disposition of the man and 
father. The child first entering school from the nurs- 
ery of the home needs this feminine quality to help 
him make the transition from the home to the school. 
Just that quality of mothering helps to make the re- 
adjustment from nursery or home to school with least 
suffering and fear. To supervise the work of these 
women in the primary grades, therefore, the woman 
supervisor will be best, since the woman supervisor 
will not only understand the child nature better, but 
will also get and understand the woman primary teach- 
er's point of view instinctively. 

In no portion of the entire field of supervision is 
sex so clearly a qualification as in the primary field. 
The primary supervisor must be a woman. Happily 
practice settled this matter quite a while ago. Most 
high school supervisors are men, probably because 
hitherto most high school principals have been men. 

In colleges there is no supervision of instruction. 
The old and the young professor alike are supposed 
to know the subject, and the ancient and mediaeval 



ETHICS OF TEACHING 29 

belief that to know the subject constitutes the only 
fitness to teach lingers on to our day undisturbed by a 
single serious question or criticism. The average col- 
lege president no more thinks of supervising his fac- 
ulty to improve the quality of the instruction than does 
the average student who knows he is suffering under 
the very poor instruction of his college teachers. 

Indeed, complaints of students to the president are 
about the only knowledge which college presidents 
have when the work is poor. The supposed "profes- 
sional" ethics of college teaching has from time im- 
memorial made the professor supreme in his depart- 
ment, and alleged academic freedom has barred crit- 
icism of method as well as criticism of matter. 

This mediaeval attitude will be corrected when the 
democratic nature of our education once thoroughly 
permeates the college authorities. When it comes, the 
college supervisor will surely be a man for the number 
of women who have the educational and academic prep- 
aration for such work is a negligible quantity if 
stated in terms of number needed for the work. 

Most special supervisors are women, notwithstand- 
ing that many women teachers prefer a man super- 
visor. This has come about because the true value of 
supervision has not been recognized and asserted to 
boards of directors. Therefore the salaries for super- 
vision could not be large, and men were not attracted 
to the positions. Also, men generally are less patient 
in dealing with details, while women are generally 
patient and painstaking with details. 

These differences which seem concomitants of sex 
difference must be taken into account in deciding 
whether for any subject or grade or level of instruc- 



30 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

tion the supervisor should be a man or a woman. It 
is now admitted that women are the only good primary 
supervisors ; other parts of the special fields may grad- 
ually be yielded and assigned to them. The disposition 
of woman to value the personal factor, that is her pre- 
dominant inclination to be emotional rather than ju- 
dicial, will also affect final establishment of practice, 
unless women by training and practice shall find it 
easier to lay aside personal considerations and to value 
the professional values with the impartiality and de- 
tachment of the diagnostician or of the judge on the 
bench. Why men have this ability or quality rather 
than women need not be explained, but the fact must 
be recognized in the analysis of supervisory activity. 

In education the supervisor needs all the general 
education that the college course in liberal arts can 
confer. That not all nor even many supervisors now 
could qualify under that statement of requirements 
does not affect the need for that much preparation 
academically. 

Travel and study of contemporary schools may also 
be enumerated. Travel to make him genuinely human 
and tolerant will be of much value to the supervisor. 
Then the supervisor needs special study of the fields 
of knowledge and instruction which he is to supervise. 

As the result of their college and university educa- 
tion the best supervisors will continue constant stu- 
dents of the field which they supervise and of parallel 
fields also. 

The professional training and experience of the 
supervisor have up to this time been a very variable 
quantity.* At this moment successful teaching ex- 



University Courses have begun to try to supply this need. 



TRAINED SUPERVISORS 31 

perience is perhaps most generally demanded and ac- 
cepted as professional preparation for supervisory- 
duties. 

No one is so insistent on larger requirements for 
supervisors as the best supervisors themselves. They 
deplore their lack of acquaintance with the entire field 
of knowledge and teaching practice in the special field 
supervised. The start of supervision could be made 
only if successful teachers were turned into supervis- 
ors. The universities are trying to remedy the con- 
dition and are trying to train supervisors to fit the 
needs of good supervision. This is encouraging and 
warrants the expectation of a better day for super- 
vision. 

Assuming actual teaching experience within the 
field or at the level which supervision is to oversee 
as the fundamental quality, ouf supervisor must also 
have been supervised at that level or in that field. Be- 
fore being given sole responsibility in any field or at 
any level, the prospective supervisor should have had 
a period of trial or training supervision, of supervision 
in conjunction with a trained supervisor, so as to com- 
pare his judgments of values with the trained super- 
visor. 

This is of course parallel to the teacher's training 
in the cadet period. It is no more necessary for teach- 
ers than it is for supervisors to pass through such a 
"practice" or cadet stage. Ideals and standards of 
judgment must be learned by application and com- 
parison. Assurance can not be learned otherwise. The 
probably correct estimate of value must be proved 
correct by comparison with that of the experienced 
supervisor or judge or critic. 



32 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

The supervisor must also know from the profes- 
sional point of view the level or field of knowledge 
which he is to supervise, as well as the history and 
philosophy of teaching method and practice in that 
field. The wider the range of knowledge of method 
of the supervisor, the better will be the judgment of 
values of practices observed. The supervisor who has 
the largest fund of knowledge of methods and prac- 
tices has surely the best possibility of making suitable 
suggestions for change and improvement of instruc- 
tion. 

The supervisor must also have a working ethics of 
supervision. Such an ethics exists even if it has not 
been definitely formulated and accepted. That stage 
of the development of specialized supervision is still 
to come, but it will come; until it comes, each super- 
visor will practice an individual code of ethics in his 
supervision, because his work as supervisor is a dis- 
tinctly human relation. The teacher is the striving 
professional sister of the supervisor, and that sister- 
hood cannot be ignored and dare not be abused. 

The supervisor must know the resources of helpful 
and inspiring literature for teachers within his field, 
and must be able to make teachers wish to know it and 
to learn from it. What is suited to the skilful and to 
the unskilful, the supervisor must choose and recom- 
mend with an unerring judgment. As the leader and 
director of teachers' meetings the supervisor must in- 
tegrate this knowledge and this desire into his coun- 
sels whether private or public, so that actually the 
world's best efforts of her upward striving teachers 
may become a ready resource to the teachers whom he 
supervises. 



CONDUCT OF CLASS 33 

When visiting a school for supervision the super- 
visor needs to be able to understand the situation. 
From what is happening or going on before his eyes 
he must be able to make infallible inference as to what 
may or might happen or what has happened when he 
was not present to witness it. A school that is dis- 
orderly when the supervisor is present shows that 
orderliness is not a state or condition insisted upon 
when the supervisor is absent. 

Similarly with other conditions. To the supervisor 
who knows the work and who has (irst hand acquaint- 
ance with conditions, such an understanding is possi- 
ble without extended study or investigation. Meliorat- 
ing conditions must also be taken into account. The 
supervisor must "size up the situation" from what he 
sees, and should not make many mistakes and should 
almost never make any serious mistakes. 

The separation of the occasional from the perma- 
nent, of the momentary outburst from the settled prac- 
tice, will not be difficult if the supervisor has had the 
right kind of training and experience. The supervisor 
must also be able with a few leading questions to lay 
bare to himself such appearances as are not clear or 
which may be of twofold significance. 

A completely silent and orderly room as the super- 
visor enters may be a thoroughly disciplined room 
which has learned and which is practicing self-regula- 
tion. It may also be a room in which the teacher has 
just "settled" a disorderly pupil, and the rest of the 
pupils may fear a further outbreak from the teacher. 
Experience has revealed similar contrasts to super- 
visors everywhere. 
3 



34 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Whatever is going on in the schoolroom the super- 
visor should have a quick apprehension of its value for 
school purposes. He must be quick to detect and to 
decide w^hether the proceeding is wise, doubtful, or 
unwise. Inability to decide should lead to questioning 
of the teacher during the after-visit conference. 

Comment on everything done during the visit will 
convince the teacher that the supervisor knows the 
job and knows also just how the teacher is performing 
it. Injury to teachers is possible if the supervisor 
passes over some trifle and lets the teacher believe 
either that the supervisor did not know it or having 
seen it did not think it a fault. 

Discouragement may also result if the supervisor' 
fails to commend the commendable. "What is the use 
of trying, he never notices?" has been the plaint of 
many a disheartened teacher. Watchfulness by the 
supervisor and as nice a care for expression of appre- 
ciation as for correction are necessities of the super- 
visor's procedure. 

Sympathy, fellow-feeling, the ability to put your- 
self in the teacher's place, is an indispensable need in 
the action of the supervisor. Not m'audlin twaddle, 
not cheap nor extravagant praise of everything and of 
every one. Both are mischievous and nothing but mis- 
chievous. 

Whatever the situation, the teacher is likely to see 
only her side. The supervisor from the larger out- 
look of the overseeing official, from the longer experi- 
ence and from the wide acquaintance with professional 
standards, must see both the teacher's and the profes- 
sional aspect, and thence must lead the teacher both 
to the enjoyment of the realization of the larger ends 



CONFERENCE AFTER VISIT 35 

achieved by the procedure whether lesson or drill, and 
to be sorry for the fact of only partial attainment of 
some desired results. 

Then praise of what is worthy of praise, necessary 
and illuminating questioning of what is questionable, 
clear condemnation of what is deserving of condemna- 
tion with reasons therefore and suggestion of the bet- 
ter, must also be part of the supervisor's proceeding 
in putting himself into the teacher's place. 

Following the visit, the teacher and the supervisor 
should have time for deliberative talk and considera- 
tion of the supervisor's observations, suggestions and 
corrections. That most supervision fails at this point 
must be admitted. Supervisors do not take time and 
teachers do not have time for it. During recesses, 
after school, or on Saturdays, are the possibilities. 
Supervision itself and supervisors are chiefly to blame 
for this shortcoming. If supervisors had from the 
start insisted on the necessary complement of super- 
visory visiting in supervising conferences, boards of 
directors and communities would now be educated to 
so regard the matter and to permit the expenditure 
of the money needed to secure it. Whatever is needed 
to make public schools effective will be paid by any 
community. It needs but be convinced of the necessity 
and of the certainty that the expenditure of the money 
•will secure the necessity. 

Conferences of supervisors and teachers within 
school time are justifiable. The end sought is improve- 
ment of instruction. As normal schools have been 
supplied because of the need to train teachers, so time 
for supervisory conferences will be secured when su- 
pervisors demand it and when teachers testify that 



36 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

the result of the conferences are better teaching, hap- 
pier teachers and greater progress by the children. 

In the conference of supervisor and teacher we 
reach the "flower and fruit" stage of supervision. 
Other steps of procedure are necessary preparation 
for this. That so much of our supervision is nugatory 
or fails to attain its full fruitage is entirely due to this 
lack of the deliberative conference. In it the super- 
visor learns the teacher's plan and aims, commends 
and encourages what is right and in keeping with the 
best practice, asks questions or suggests comparisons 
about matters which the teacher can herself improve 
if given the right angle of view, or shows the weak- 
nesses and faults of what was wrong and fruitless. 

Direct statement of the better way will sometimes 
be necessary, but the more skilful the supervisor and 
the better the teacher, the more will questioning be 
resorted to so that the teacher may grow by thinking 
it out for herself rather than accept the supervisor's 
opinion readymade. 

For instance, after a "concert recitation" in which 
it was apparent to the supervisor that after the third 
repetition only a few children were giving active at- 
tention and effort, instead of saying, "Never let the 
children say the thing oftener than three times," asked 
the teacher to observe for how many repetitions she 
was able to secure active attention and interested par- 
ticipation by the children. Then that teacher began to 
study concert recitations. 

The next visit of the supervisor disclosed that con- 
cert repetitions had been reduced from five to three, 
and the teacher replied to the supervisor's question of 
the previous conference by saying, "When I watched 



HOLDING PUPILS' ATTENTION 37 

the class I soon saw that I could not hold their atten- 
tion closely nor secure an effort of the will in the repe- 
tition beyond the third repetition." 

The supervisor must have the qualifications and 
the qualities which shall make instruction better, the 
children and the teacher happier because the work is 
successful, and which shall hurt or humiliate no one 
because something was found which was not as it 
might be or as it should be. Surgery and dentistry 
have for their highest measure of skill to help without 
hurt; supervision of instruction will do well to adopt 
that standard of excellence in achievement. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Teacher : Supervision an Irritation. 

The use of the name supervision can not effective- 
ly conceal the fact that much so-called supervision is 
not effective for inspiration but produces irritation. 
Putting labels on things is not the same as producing 
the thing ; this is as true of supervision as of nutmegs, 
for instance. Many forms of perversion of supervision 
may be found. The most common form is that which 
uses school visitation, ceremony, and assumption of 
superiority, but w^hich leaves teachers disheartened, 
depressed and even irritated. 

Teachers evince such irritation by all kinds of re- 
marks to each other. Here is a common accompani- 
ment of such irritating supervision: 'The idea of call- 
ing that supervision! He never proposed anything 
better in place of the things he condemned." 

Teachers w^ho "fear" the coming of the supervisor 
nearly alw^ays express irritation from his visits. The 
drill of the practice teaching in the model school should 
accustom or harden the teacher into self-possession 
during the visit of the supervisor, or it should convince 
the cadet teacher that she should not enter the teach- 
ing profession. 

Increasingly teachers w^ill be supervised because 
school systems increasingly include larger numbers of 
teachers, and no large group of teachers can attain 
similar ends unless supervised. Fear of the supervisor 
may be due to neglect of adequate preparation of les- 
sons, plans, or materials. 

In' that case the fear is proper in itself, but to re- 
deem herself as far as possible the teacher should at 
once frankly explain the non-preparation and should 

38 



INSPIRATION OR IRRITATION 39 

ask for another chance. Under those circumstances 
she may and should feel ashamed, but she need not be 
fearful. Every fairminded and simply human super- 
visor vi^ill be glad for the honesty which confesses the 
short-coming and which shows determination to cor- 
rect it by asking for another trial. 

There are three infallible marks of the right kind 
of supervision : Commendation of the good, condemna- 
tion of the unsatisfactory, suggestion of the better. 
The supervisor who can not see something to commend 
in a schoolroom is suffering from something serious. 
It may be physical or mental or moral dyspepsia. It 
may be a sour stomach, an overweening conceit of his 
own ability or an overwhelming sense of his infalli- 
bility. They are equally effective in producing irrita- 
tion instead of inspiration. There must be the will to 
commend, not merely the accidental condescension to 
commend. 

What is commended must be recognizable by the 
teacher as commendable, or she at once loses respect 
for the supervisor's judgment or for his sincerity. Mere 
flattery will not serve. A sure discernment of the good 
and the best quality, an unfailing recognition of the 
best ends of effort, and an instant readiness to direct 
the teacher to accepted sources of help, these three are 
needed to give skill and strategic power in commenda- 
tion of teaching procedure. 

These will win respect and trust, and will start the 
teacher by imitation and emulation to a desire to know 
and to learn and to follow the better way. To fail in 
commendation of the right thing at the right time is 
fatal to the teacher's esteem for the supervisor, and 



40 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

is sure to leave the teacher disheartened and disap- 
pointed, if not positively irritated. 

The teacher, like the supervisor, is human and is 
the better for a little praise, for a little commendation. 
Not to offer it vi^hen it has been deserved shows the 
supervisor as unperceiving, or undiscerning or unap- 
preciative. Either produces irritation. The teacher 
who regards her supervisor as unperceiving or undis- 
cerning or unappreciative vdll surely not hold him in 
high esteem. The invigoration that comes from com- 
mendation is an immeasurable addition to the teach- 
er's power as an instructor. 

Supervision, instead of thus encouraging, may de- 
press and dishearten, and is sure to do so if the super- 
visor visits the school and says nothing, with the 
thought that the teacher will understand that absence 
of condemnation of work is an implied judgment of 
"satisfactory" upon it. 

Poor indeed must be the school where nothing com- 
mendable occurs during the supervisor's visit. He 
should be sure to see it and to speak about it as com- 
mendable. If speaking to the teacher is difficult or 
impossible, the supervisor will do well to write to the 
teacher so that she shall be sure to realize that her ef- 
forts are perceived, to conclude that effort is worth 
while and does not go unnoticed. 

The omission of face-to-face discussion of the visit 
also disappoints teachers many times. Even super- 
visors who leave written copies of observations and 
judgments of the work observed, many times inflict 
sharp suffering on teachers because the "notes" are not 
clear as written and the teacher fears she is not under- 
stood. 



LESSON PLANNING 41 

Much irritation from supervision could also be ob- 
viated if supervisors felt that time taken for confer- 
ences with teachers before visiting their rooms for 
supervision is v/ell and properly spent. The confer- 
ence in advance of the visit impresses the teacher with 
the necessity of making good plans as no lecture or no 
series of lectures on lesson planning can possibly im- 
press her. 

The lesson plan approved before the lesson is 
taught, or the lesson plan which contains the integrat- 
ed suggestions of the supervisor, if used for the lesson 
which the supervisor sees taught, puts both teacher 
and supervisor on a different basis toward that piece 
of work and toward each other. There is now joint 
responsibility, hence there will probably be more sym- 
pathetic, more tolerant judgment on both sides. This 
brings the ''fellow-feeling" into supervision and makes 
it a vital, human relation instead of an official caste re- 
lation of superior to inferior. 

The supervision which commends, condemns and 
suggests the better is inspiration. The supervision 
which says nothing, or which merely condemns and 
suggests nothing better, or which does not confer with 
the teacher about both good and poor aspects of the 
work, always after visits and sometimes in cases of 
very weak but very willing teachers before the super- 
visory visit, is irritation. The change from the latter 
to the former is possible to all supervisors, and all 
teachers are hoping and desiring that the change shall 
come speedily. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Teacher: Supervision an Inspiration. 

Tpiere were school teachers long before there were 
superintendents or supervisors of teaching, and there 
are still some people who think the supervisor of in- 
struction a useless part of the school organization. 
Happily this disbelief is being displaced by belief in 
the worth of supervision. 

The factory, the mill, the big farm or plantation, 
the big building operation, all these need superintend- 
ents to plan and to direct the workmen. It is a direc- 
tion that is ever present. Direction in any enterprise, 
if as infrequent as in many schools, less than once a 
year, would not be worth any more than is much school 
supervision. To be effective in industry, the super- 
vision must direct the progress of the work minutely, 
and must be able to follow up the directions to see that 
they are carried out. 

One reason why school supervision is not valued 
more highly is that the activity which usually passes 
by the name of supervision is no more like the real 
thing than supervision of his farm were carried on if 
the farm owner saw his boss farmer but once a year. 
Then suppose the boss farmer to be a farmer without 
experience in farming and ignorant of farm work ; the 
chances of reaping any marked benefits from such over- 
sight and direction would be almost zero. The case is 
no better for much supervision of teaching. 

It is useless to demand certain qualifications for 
the teacher who is to be supervised. Supervision finds 
one of its chief necessities in the fact that the teaching 
corps of any system of schools has teachers who pos- 
sess such widely different qualifications for the work. 

42 



DIFFERENCE IN QUALIFICATIONS 43 

Could all the teachers of a system be chosen so as to 
represent equal experience, equal preparation, and 
equal supervision under experience, very little super- 
vision would suffice. 

The range of difference usually starts at young 
teachers w^ith great hopes and with large aspirations 
but no experience, to the teachers who have had a 
score or more of years of experience. To equalize the 
chances of the children under instruction in a system 
with such a wide variety of teaching capability, is one 
of the hardest tasks of supervision. 

The teacher with least preparation and least ex- 
perience will of course need most guidance from the 
supervisor. The teacher with most preparation and 
most experience should need least of the supervisor's 
help. Complicating the problem of amount and qual- 
ity of supervision needed is the problem of natural 
endowment of the teacher. 

Every system of schools must have supervision and 
every teacher should be in touch with the supervisor. 
The aims, purposes and ideals of the system can not 
be acquired in any other way. Established usages 
which save time for teacher and children are different 
in every system. Hence if there is to be unity of aim 
and purpose and coherence in forward look in the 
plans, some one intelligence must make the large gen- 
eral plans, must formulate the big aims and purposes 
of the system. 

Were each teacher left to choose course of study 
and textbooks, confusion of aims and purposes would 
result. Therefore supervision is a necessity. Of course 
the prevalence of the office and the presence of officials 
is a much more significant admission of the fact. To 



44 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

help each teacher under conditions such as those stated 
requires readiness and wealth of resource combined 
with the diplomatic skill of a prime minister in the 
supervisor. 

Supposing an average teacher, with academic prep- 
aration and professional training and some teaching 
experience, what should be her relation to supervision 
and what her attitude toward it? The answer is ob- 
vious, she should be open-minded. To the teacher's 
stock of knowledge, of methods and devices supervision 
will be able to suggest variations and additions of high 
value. 

The teacher who is new in a system needs help to 
reach the system's aims and point of view. The teach- 
er who has been continuously in the system needs to 
be helped to nevv'^ points of view, to see or to find new 
justifications for the established practice. 

Supervisor and teacher can not long be satisfied 
to continue routine procedure on the ground that it 
has w&rked for a long while. That reason for doing 
a thing discloses that no recent or new justification 
has been worked out or discovered. Growth of teach- 
er, of supervisor, of the system requires the alertness 
which finds in the changing conditions outside of the 
school in life its reasons for change of method and plan 
as well as for its continuance of what is unchanged. 

The child learns to read by the sentence method 
now, although as late as 1850 the alphabet method was 
the professionally accepted method. Learning to read 
remains, but alert teaching and supervision discov- 
ered that the unit of thought is the sentence and the 
unit of utterance is the syllable, and hence changed 
its method. 



HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS 45 

Another quality needed by the teacher under super- 
vision is willingness to accept and to try suggestions. 
The supervisor sees the best work in a system and can 
pass on from teacher to teacher the excellences ob- 
served, thus enriching his entire system by the dis- 
semination of the best ideas. Simple trust in the good 
intentions of the supervisor, simple belief that he 
means to make helpful suggestions, whole-hearted ac- 
ceptance of the implied trust that he believes the 
teacher capable of profiting by suggestions, are marks 
of this open-mindedness. Readiness to try and then 
alertness to modify suggestions so that they will ex- 
actly fit the needs of the teacher and her pupils is the 
next quality for the teacher under supervision. 

Then when she has wrought out a happy and suc- 
cessful adaptation of the suggestion, she should be 
ready to pass the word of the good success along to 
her co-workers. Thus pupils, teacher, supervisor and 
supervision will be helped and dignified in the minds 
of all observers and critics. 

What is the right response' and reaction of the 
teacher to the suggestions of a supervisor? Does any- 
one suppose that it should be implicit obedience be- 
cause the supervisor is supposed to know so much 
more than the teacher? Would not that be saying that 
the teacher shall be an automaton operated as if by 
wires and strings? When the supervisor pulls the 
wire the teacher leaps or glides and squeaks in imita- 
tion of intelligent speech. 

Of course such a statement makes the proposal 
ridiculous, but not more ridiculous than are many of 
the expected and even awaited responses to sugges- 
tions given by supervisors. Granted that the super- 



46 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

visor directs and suggests from the broader view, 
based on a longer and wider experience than the teach- 
er, shall the supervisor's suggestion be regarded as a 
command just as a general of an army issues a com- 
mand? 

Or shall the teacher be supposed to receive direc- 
tion and suggestion of the supervisor, and, because 
of more intimate knowledge of conditions of her school 
and because of better acquaintance with the pupils, 
shall she have the privilege, shall she have the right, 
and we may even ask, shall it not be her duty, to suit 
the suggestion and direction to her conditions and to 
her children? 

Equally with the supervisor who acts the martinet 
and the mechanician does the teacher err who permits 
the imposition of the role of a puppet upon her or who 
supinely submits to be a mere Judy in the pantomime. 
Sympathy with her pupils is assumed for the teacher. 

Intelligence of the teacher is also assumed as a 
characteristic of the teacher. The supervisor may 
know child nature ; the teacher should know intimately 
and completely the children whom she is teaching. To 
know child nature helps to know children, but to know 
the children of a school is indispensable if instruction 
is to be adapted to them. 

Disposition to compare the suggested plan with the 
already used practice is another way of describing the 
same thing. Taking pains to refer to books, maga- 
zines, authorities in the flesh if possible, the sugges- 
tions received from the supervisor, this is the sign and 
mark of the real student, of the teacher who profits by 
supervision, to whom supervision becomes a resource. 



NEW SUGGESTIONS 47 

The teacher must adopt and adapt new suggestions 
as the result of this open-mindedness, this desire for 
the best for her pupils. She should be grateful for the 
suggestions received. She can best show the sincerity 
of her gratitude through her effort to adapt the sug- 
gestion. She will report to her supervisor the result 
of her effort to use the modified or adapted suggestion. 

A stronger teacher, a more rapidly progressing 
school, a better moral tone and a more expectant feel- 
ing among the teachers, and a steadier direction and a 
saner supervision will be inevitable results of such re- 
actions to supervision. 



CHAPTER VI. 

INVIGORATION OF INSTRUCTION THROUGH SUPERVISION. 

Of all the superintendent's numerous and various 
duties, that of invigorating instruction through super- 
vision is easily most important. This must be true 
because the school exists mainly for instruction. Hence 
means to that end are constantly sought by every earn- 
est superintendent. Many plans exist, and all of them 
possess merit. 

No plan has all the faults and none has all the ex- 
cellences. Without claiming superior merit for the 
plan here described, it can truthfully and modestly be 
said that this plan has worked and is working. The 
forms here shown are the result of much trial and ex- 
perimentation. No superintendent should think, how- 
ever, that he can adopt any other superintendent's plan 
without adaptation to his own situation. 

The form was prepared for use of a supervising 
superintendent, that is for a superintendent who spent 
about one-fifth of his time in visiting teachers at work 
in their schoolrooms. Originally written statements 
of observations and of suggestions were used to put 
the judgments of the superintendent into the hands 
of the teachers right after the superintendent's visit. 
That is the time when such opinions and suggestions 
carry weight and exert force. 

Therefore it is entirely proper to start with the 
visit of the superintendent, whom we will now call the 
supervisor. The teacher's room is visited and the work 
observed. The regular schedule of the room may be 
carried out or the supervisor may call for a particular 
class or classes. If he is making a continuous effort 
to unify arithmetic in the entire system, he will neces- 

48 



SCHEDULE FOR RECITATION 49 

sarily ask to see that class or will visit the room when 
that subject is on the schedule for recitation. 

The routine of procedure will be noted. The class 
may be questioned or the teacher's work may be sup- 
plemented, but whatever is done should be carefully 
noted in its proper place on the observation blank. 
From this blank the teacher's work is valued and prop- 
er report made to the committee on instruction and 
a copy put into the supervisor's card record along with 
the teacher's rating card. 

Thus definite observations and judgments are made 
and recorded on standard merits or excellences. This 
is quite different from forming a general impression 
and registering that in "recollection." 

A printed form on white paper is marked "orig- 
inal" and a "duplicate" is on yellow paper. Insertion of 
carbon paper between the white and yellow sheets re- 
sults in making two copies of the notes at one writing. 
This saves time and labor. 

Following the observations under "Procedure not- 
ed" come the "Commendations." Then several other 
spaces under or opposite headings as shown in the 
form. The "Commendations" are perhaps the most 
valuable single feature. To put something into the 
report the supervisor must study the school while he 
stays. The "Suggestions" are formatively helpful. 
They are also a measure of the supervisor's larger ex- 
perience and greater resourcefulness. As one teacher 
remarked when passing judgment on the form: 

"A teacher will soon see whether or not the super- 
visor has much on her." A series of these reports 
handed to the teacher by the supervisor with the spaces 
4 



50 common-sense supervision 

(Original) 
(ANY) SCHOOL DISTRICT 

SUPERINDENDENT'S NOTES OF VISITS No. 

(Numbers Refer to List on the Back of the Sheet) 
teacher; school; 



topic- 



-grades; pupils in class; branch- 



Procedure noted: 



STATISTICS 



GRADES ENROLLED PRESENT 



Commendation: 
Improvable : 
Suggestions: 



Reaction to suggestions: 
Suggestions repeated: 

Worth of work: Time: Place. 

for conference on 

Length of visit, min. 

Date Hour 



Superintendent 
(Printed in duplicate sets on white and yellow paper.) 



OBSERVATION BLANK 



51 



(Reverse side of sheet) 

EXCELLENCES OF TEACHING 

Note — Numhei-s of this list tvill he used in the Notes 

of Visits 



I. GENERAL CONDITIONS 

1. Management of light. 

2. Management of ventilation. 

3. Management of temperature. 

4. Appearance of blackboards. 

5. Care of cloak-rooms. 

6. Care of corridors. 

7. Uses of maps and charts. 
S. Oversight of grounds. 

9. Care of school property. 

10. Orderliness of arrangements. 

11. Pupils' work displayed. 

12. Floors clean. 

13. Teacher offers suggestions. 

II. THE TEACHER 

14. Animation. 

15. Bearing before school. 

16. Language and expr-essions used. 

17. "Voice. 

18. Preparation of work. 

19. Attitude towards puyils. 

20. Attitude toward work. 

21. Use of supplies. 

22. Use of time. 

23. School reports to date. 

III. THE PUPILS 

24. Properly seated. 

25. Right positions required. 

26. Orderly movements requived. 

27. Use time profitably. 
2". Ara responsive. 

2S. Are earnest in work. 

30. Show respect. 

31. Well-mannered. 

32. Prompt. 

33. Punctual. 

34. Regular in attendance. 



IV. THE INSTRUCTION 

35. Requires comparisons. 

36. Connects lesson with pupils' expe- 

rience. 

37. Requires independent thought. 

38. Develops intelligence. 

39. Adapted to pupils. 

40. Leads pupils to ask questions. 

41. Trains for independent study. 

42. Suggests wisely. 

43. Discovers weaknesses. 

44. Develops pupils' interest. 

V. THE DISCIPLINE 

45. Develops self-control. 

46. Develops self-direction. 

47. Corrects by commendation and 

suggestion. 

48. Uses fear judiciously. 

49. Secures right conduct from ethical 

considerations. 

VI. THE RECITATION 

50. Arouses and sustains lesson-inter- 

est. 

51. Makes all pupils take part. 
62. Tests preparation. 

53. Questions in correct form. 

54. Answers in correct form. 

55. Elicits discussion. 

56. Employs drill advantageously. 

57. Uses reference material. 

58. Combines and socializes effort. 

59. Commends success and effort. 

60. Lesson plan evident. 

61. Lesson plan executed. 

62. Pupils criticise and evaluate their 

own effort. 

63. Lesson assignment starts effort- 

evoking interest. 

64. Corrects faults by commending 

virtues. 



52 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

under "Suggestions" all empty will tell a most reveal- 
ing story to that teacher. 

The "Reaction to Suggestions" serves a useful pur- 
pose in tempering the tone of supervisor and super- 
vised in the after-visit conference about the visit and 
the report. "Follow-up" efforts need to be carefully 
noted. A second suggestion that a correction be made, 
with the remark that this is the second suggestion of 
the kind that has been made, never fails to force home 
its gentle rebuke. Since the earlier report recorded 
the fact, so that certainty is possible, all temptation 
and disposition to denial or disagreement is removed. 
Here another advantage of the form comes to light. 
It is possible for the supervisor to quickly consult the 
notes of previous visits, so as to give the new visit the 
full force of eonsecutiveness. 

The other parts of the blank easily explain them- 
selves. A few have value for the gathering of statis- 
tics. If these statistics have a bearing on the instruc- 
tion they should be gathered. For example, the pres- 
ence of several classes seated in a room while another 
is reciting affects the recitation, and the instruction. 
Should the class contain twenty or more pupils the 
record of that fact is quite important in explaining 
such an observation as "Some pupils not called on to 
recite." 

On the reverse side of both the white and the yel- 
low sheet there are listed under six appropriate head- 
ings, 64 Excellences of Teaching. This list can be 
made longer or shorter as any supervisor may desire. 
With beginning teachers a shorter list will be better. 

With primary teachers different items should be 
chosen. With teachers of longer experience or in a 



NUMBERING EXCELLENCES 53 

high school more pointed criticism could be given by 
a longer and more detailed list. The word criticism 
here means commendation and correction. Several 
ends can be reached with a single form if desired by 
using large print for the simpler teaching and smaller 
print for the points that are to apply to the higher 
and more complicated teaching work of the larger and 
older pupils. 

Numbering the excellences consecutively makes 
possible the entry by number of any excellence under 
the commendation, or the suggestion "27 needs atten- 
tion." With little labor much recording and suggest- 
ing can be quickly accomplished. The presence of the 
list confers these advantages: 

1. It reminds the supervisor and the teacher of 
the excellences to be striven for in the instruction. 
The forgetting or the overlooking of a teaching excel- 
lence is almost impossible if the supervisor as he ob- 
serves and writes his "original" sheet has the reverse 
side of another sheet before him. 

2. The list becomes the "standard" for the super- 
visor and for all the teachers of the system. 

3. At every visit by the supervisor it serves as a 
special suggestion to the teacher of the excellences 
listed. The supervisor can note others. 

4. Procedures and practices not listed seem of 
doubtful or of inferior value by necessary inference 
and are thus discountenanced and discouraged, with- 
out a word of comment or discussion. 

A further use of the list of Excellences will be 
found if they are made the topic of explanation and 
discussion in teachers' meetings. To show the possi- 



54 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

bilities a brief statement or description or judgment 
of several of the excellences is here made : 

7. Uses of maps and charts: Wall maps ready 
in position when needed ; not a hasty scurry for them 
after class has been called, usually to make the discov- 
ery that they are not in place or not in working con- 
dition. Uses maps and diagrams of the textbook. Has 
children prepare sketch maps. Use of maps in history 
as well as in geography. 

21. Use of supplies: Practices economy and 
teaches economy, reproving waste of materials, injury 
to books, etc. 

24. Properly seated: Seat and desk right height, 
overlap of desk over seat right for "plus" and "minus" 
distance. Pupils who are "disturbers" seated where 
they can do little or no disturbing, deaf where they can 
hear. 

39. Adapted to pupils: Instruction makes sure 
that children get an understanding of lesson, of text, 
of words. Requires recitation in terms and language 
at the highest level of pupils' capability, so as to in- 
sure groAvth and the absorption of ideas and of words 
into the mental equipment of the pupils. 

48. Uses fear judiciously: Fear to do wrong, fear 
to injure another pupil, fear to destroy property. Very 
rarely, fear of the teacher's ability to use force. 

53. Questions in correct form: Questions are def- 
inite, clear, comprehensible to the pupils. Avoids 
"yes" and "no" questions. Avoids suggestive ques- 
tions. Asks "why" frequently. Uses the constructive 
question, the sequential question. Does not forget that 
the memory question is the mere start of real recita- 
tion, but brings it to pass that what is remembered is 



RECORD OF JUDGMENTS 55 

then put into its proper connection and relation to pre- 
ceding and subsequent ideas. 

From these hints every supervisor will see just 
what one supervisor has found valuable to himself and 
to teachers. 

The results following from the use of such a form 
in the ways suggested are not hard to see. The white 
sheet goes to the teacher and becomes her property. 
The yellow sheet or copy goes into the supervisor's 
file. If needed, this copy can be used at any time to 
settle any dispute between supervisor and teacher. 

These "copies" are available to the proper commit- 
tee of the board, and they constitute the record on 
which judgments of quality and value of the instruc- 
tion work of the teacher are to be based. This con- 
dition has a most sobering effect upon teachers and 
upon supervisors in cases of disagreement of judg- 
ment, especially in cases where a teacher treats the 
supervision as of slight value. 

A teacher whose invariable attitude had been that 
of indifference to the supervisor so she would say, 
"Well, when it comes to opinions, my word and opin- 
ion are just as good as his," changed her attitude en- 
tirely as the reports recording suggestions for needed 
improvements piled up against her. To the first few 
reports she merely remarked, "I think just as well of 
him as he thinks of me," and attempted no explanation 
or justification of the faults mentioned. Also she made 
no effort to correct the faults. 

As the second and third reports came into her 
hands and she realized that there were copies on file 
in the office, she realized that she was defenseless 
against those reports which now had become accusa- 



56 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

tions. Whatever defense or exculpation she might 
have made when the reports were handed to her she 
had not *'cared" to bother about. Obviously non-pro- 
test when the first and second reports were handed to 
her had now become an admission of culpability. 

Conversely, if the reports are good and abound in 
commendations, those little slips are the best recom- 
mendation any teacher can take when applying for a 
position in another district. Every superintendent and 
every board member will be ready to accept the state- 
ments thereon at face value and will ask for no further 
testimonial from that source. 

The direct results may be thus summarized: 

1. The teacher knows her standing with the su- 
pervisor. 

2. The teacher learns definitely and gradually 
what are the good and the bad points in her work as 
her supervisor values it. 

3. The teacher can make direct efforts to correct 
defects, and can make specific request upon the super- 
intendent for help to make such correction. 

4. The teacher feels that she has fair treatment 
or that she can get it by entering a defense or by filing 
statements to justify her procedure, as by citing her 
authority for the facts or for the method used. 

5. The teacher has trust and confidence in the 
supervisor if he uses such a plan as is here outlined. 
Entire candor and straightforwardness on both sides 
are possible and necessary. Mutual respect, trust, and 
confidence will result, and the relation will then be 
mutually helpful and satisfactory. An increasingly 
intimate co-operation will make the system evenly and 
uniformly strong and steady. 



REPORTS AS RECOMMENDATIONS 57 

6. The supervisor's opinion is given as sound a 
basis of scientifically observed fact as an individual 
judgment ever can have. 

7. Shortcomings of any teacher can at any time 
be given special attention if intensive supervision is 
deemed preferable. The study and tabulation of the 
observations will reveal the right questions and topics 
for the teachers' meetings. 

8. At any one visit only a few of the items or 
qualities are observed and criticised, yet the entire list 
of desirable qualities is before all the teachers of the 
system all the time, acting continuously as a standard- 
izing force. If all the qualities or items were rated and 
criticised, the sense of discriminating criticism would 
be swallowed up by the impression of triviality; the 
proceeding would have a strong resemblance to mere 
fault-finding. 

9. The discussion of the list of excellences in 
teachers' meetings helps a body of teachers to a unity 
of aim and effort because there is concurrence of opin- 
ion. 

10. The entire teaching efi'ort of supervisor and 
teachers is held steadfastly to a true aim. 

11. The chances and temptations to pettiness of 
action, to whimsicality, caprice and variableness of 
disposition, are reduced to a minimum. Supervision 
stays on the professional level most easily. The per- 
sonal equation is almost eliminated. Hence the super- 
visory work wins and holds the esteem and confidence 
of the school board quite as certainly as of the teach- 
ers. "The system has reduced the complaints from 
teachers more than half" was the gladly spontaneous 
testimony of one school board. 



58 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

12. Inspiration and successful invigoration of ef- 
fort follow directly from definite suggestion. Inspira- 
tion is a spiritual process and this plan shows the def- 
inite phases or aspects of which it consists just as the 
chemist finds the savor of salt to be composed of chlo- 
rine and sodium. The "inspiration" consists of show- 
ing what to do and of starting the belief that the par- 
ticular teacher being supervised can do it. 

13. The plan readily wins the willing support of 
the teachers working under it. Thence will follow 
unity of effort, concert of aim and purpose, agreement 
as to the worth of results, and this will be the realiza- 
tion of the hope and desire of every supervisor, name- 
ly, a harmonious and accordant group of working 
agents and agencies. 

14. The development of a sense of dignity and of 
responsibility on a professional basis, to think of 
supervision of instruction on the purely personal level 
and to regard its deliverances of judgments and opin- 
ions on personal grounds makes teaching a worry and 
an irritation. To think of it as a professional activity 
opens the way for satisfaction, for invigoration and 
inspiration as the passion for a fine art. 

The success of such a plan may hinge on the "per- 
sonal equation" of the supervisor. If he tries to con- 
duct it on personal grounds, it will fail. If he can lift 
it into the professional altitude and maintain it there, 
the question of success or failure can not arise. In- 
stead the question will be that of degree of success. 
Requirements are definite, and "delivery of the goods" 
can be equally definite; that is what makes the plan 
work. Rural school standardization, which is spread- 
ing so rapidly, has this advantage over all the decades 



GOOD TEACHING 59 

of agitation for school improvement. Standardiza- 
tion tells definitely what to improve. So with super- 
vision for definite purposes. The combined and con- 
centrated effort to secure particular excellences is still 
an effort to get good teaching, but it is an effort to 
make the teaching not merely *'good," but good for 
something, and the something is clearly stated. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Self-supervision by Teachers: What Supervision 

Is Not. 

Self-supervision was the earliest form of super- 
vision of teachers, and it is still the most prevalent 
form. The supervisor who is most effective now is the 
one whose visits, suggestions, conferences, lead the 
teacher to be consciously critical of her own efforts. 

This state of mind produced by supervision should 
make the supervision a success ; this state of mind not 
aroused and developed in teachers under supervision 
signifies that the supervision is of the detective varie- 
ty ; they are hoping to avert being caught in poor work 
and the supervisor is trying and hoping to catch them 
in the act. It is due the fine art of supervision and the 
finer art of real teaching to disown such detective pro- 
cedure as supervision and to deny it the use of a 
worthy and noble name. It never was and never cai| 
be supervision of instruction. 

Realization of the ends of supervision of instruc- 
tion must awaken hope and aspiration in the teacher 
and not develop a low species of cunning and calcula- 
tion, namely, the cunning and calculation to outguess 
the supervisor, or the cheap and tawdry courage and 
daring which takes a chance on bluffing, that is, on 
deceiving the supervisor. 

Categorical definition of such work is not here de- 
manded, but it is not supervision of instruction. The 
alleged act may be called by that name, the official may 
have that title and may hold that office, and the teacher 
being watched may be officially under surveillance. 
Form only is supervision of instruction. 

60 



SURVEILLANCE VS. SUPERVISION 61 

Every other part of the performance is mere **cat 
and mouse" procedure, the mouse trying to escape and 
believing that it can escape and the cat trying to catch 
the mouse and believing that it shall catch the victim 
finally. Supervisors who climb to lofts to observe 
teachers through ceiling ventilating apertures, who 
stand on step ladders to peer in through transoms or 
cloak rooms, who insist on windows in classroom 
doors so that teachers may be spied as the supervisor 
passes through corridors, who invite visitors to report 
on the conduct of teachers, who question pupils, etc., 
these practice mean, contemptible and despicable "sur- 
veillance," which has been and still is delivered to some 
communities as supervision of instruction. 

They are degrading and insulting to teachers ; they 
are quackery and deceit palmed off on a community 
and a board of directors, and they debase and degrade 
the quack and mountebank who hopes to deceive his 
employers by the game of bluff which for that school 
and for that system is called supervision. Probably 
the generous construction to put upon such work is 
that the person is doing the best he knows or is ca- 
pable of doing. Intention may be good, but good in- 
tentions can not become a substitute for an under- 
standing mind and a quickened sympathy. 

The person whose supervision is of this kind in 
spirit and practice is doing much evil in the world and 
is making not only teachers and pupils unhappy, but 
is also rendering himself uncomfortable and most thor- 
oughly disliked and detested, as meanness always does 
and as it should do. Perhaps the state of mind which 
suspects teachers of "not delivering the goods" is the 
direct concomitant of an unacknowledged awareness 



62 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

that the supervisor too is not "delivering the goods," 
that because the "supervision" is a bluff and the "su- 
pervisor" a bluffer, therefore the teacher too must be 
judged from that point of view. 

Supervision operated on this plane with such ideals 
brings nothing but bitterness and disappointment- In- 
spiring supervision must help the teacher; it must 
commend what is commendable in her work; it must 
arouse and keep alive the belief that for that teacher 
effort to do better and still better work is worth while ; 
also to the belief that the effort is worth while must be 
joined the resolution to make the effort. With a con- 
sciousness rearoused and recharged after each visit of 
the supervisor, supervision has started on its way of 
success and contentment, and many times on its way of 
triumph and supreme happiness for the teacher and 
for the supervisor. 

As teaching preceded supervision, so self-supervi- 
sion must still be a part of the reaction of the teacher 
to her own work. Ceaseless judgment of her own 
work, continuous asking, "How may I do this lesson 
better next time ?" "What a fine thought for use when 
I teach my next lesson !" such expressions and medita- 
tions were part of the consciousness of the excellent 
teacher before the days of official supervision, when 
the real teacher was endeavoring from a sense of the 
sacredness and worth of her office to make her work 
of each day better than that of the preceding day, was 
seeking, studying, working to make her instruction 
"ever better." 

Teachers had such a spirit before supervisors were 
deputed to visit the schoolroms, nor was it the ab- 
sence of such spirit which would have instituted super- 



SELF-SUPERVISION 63 

vision, which can institute it or which could either 
maintain or institute supervision of instruction in the 
future. If figures could be secured, it would be inter- 
esting to learn whether a larger proportion of teach- 
ers or of official supervisors are lacking in this spirit 
of improvement and determination to grow. How- 
ever, that is not the problem here opened. 

To self-supervision we must provide first, the re- 
quirements and expectations of the persons in author- 
ity, and a gauge by which to determine progress and 
to measure degree of success of effort. Merely to say 
to teachers, "Do your best," will not induce self-super- 
vision. The teacher must know what is best, so as to 
be able to decide in what respects her plans and meth- 
ods are not best, as well also as to see in what respects 
she has already found the best way or how near she is 
to it. Standard procedure must be indicated to the 
teacher or no self -measurement is possible. 

The teacher under supervision learns these stand- 
ard requirements gradually as the result of super- 
visors' visits and criticisms. For both classes of teach- 
ers a copy of expectations and requirements will be 
helpful and will totally remove that later plea in justi- 
fication of continuance of faulty procedure, "I did not 
know what was expected of me." Steady growth of 
the teacher must be the result of conscious effort due 
to inner striving rather than as the result of effort to 
attain outward conformity. That is, desire for im- 
provement is of the spirit, and must be a spiritual 
longing, a fervent desire. 

Constant, steady effort can not be aroused except 
las a spiritual appeal. Whether or not the teacher is 



64 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

under official supervision or under self-imposed super- 
vision can not be accepted as changing the require- 
ments for growth. Both teachers must care for and 
must subject their work to their own criticism, and 
usually it is more merciless than the criticism of the 
"official" supervisor. Hence a statement of expecta- 
tions, objectives, procedures, is the first requirement 
for the teacher who would like to pass judgment on 
her own work. 

The teacher who has no supervisor to provide such 
a scale can arrange her own, or can use a scale pre- 
pared by some authority, or may use the suggested 
scales shown in this discussion. Self-supervision must 
have a definite standard of excellence toward which to 
strive for comparison and evolution of daily effort. 

With objectives named, with procedures described, 
how may the teacher measure the success of her effort ? 
Very briefly it might be replied that when attaining 
the goals set in the standard statement, she may prop- 
erly assume that her v/ork would pass for excellent 
work. 

For the teacher who is sincere and earnest enough 
to want to reach the highest possible point of excel- 
lence it will not be necessary to state that care is need- 
ed to know reality from appearance here as elsewhere. 
Honesty of judgment is sure to be present where there 
is honesty of endeavor; conversely, insincerity of en- 
deavor is most likely to beget easy acceptance of sham 
for reality. Some one on the outside may be able to 
detect the difference, but not so quickly nor so unfail- 
ingly as the teacher herself. 

Measurement to be valuable must have sincerity of 
desire and purpose on which to base itself. This hon- 



RECORD OF HAPPENINGS 65 

esty of purpose is again a spiritual attribute. Having 
the attributes of soul already mentioned, namely, de- 
sire to know the best, willingness to strive for it, and 
belief that it is attainable, is a quite dependable pre- 
requisite for the sincerity of effort which can be trust- 
ed to deliver an honest judgment as to whether or not 
the effort has succeeded. 

Still better is it if the supervisor can discuss and 
elaborate the standard of requirements with his teach- 
ers. In such discussion it will be possible to describe 
specific cases of attainment or of failure, which ought 
to be accepted as typical and concrete description. 

This detailed presentation is not usually feasible 
in written or printed tables since it unduly lengthens 
the forms. Such forms should be brief, clear, and easy 
of quick consultation. Long, exhaustive meticulous 
directions, outlines, syllabi, and so on, are a distinct 
imposition on teachers. The teachers' meeting should 
supply the details, the printed or written form should 
contain the mere outline. The standard of excellences 
of instruction (enumerated in Chapter VI) has been 
used with a body of teachers. The table can be printed 
on a card or mimeographed on the backs of supervisory 
blanks whose face is used to note happenings when 
the supervisor visits the room of a teacher. 

If such a table be put into the hands of teachers,, 
whether of a city or a county or a state even, the super- 
visory authority multiplies its visits and its influence 
many times with the teachers who desire to become 
(better from day to day. This list can be consulted, it 
Us at hand and is consulted, it is encouraging and stim- 



fulating as well as thought-provoking, and hence wins 
I willingness to refer to it. Lying on a teacher's desk, 



66 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

pasted into her plan book, or used as a place marker 
j in the plan book, are several of the best uses to which 
I such tables have been put by teachers. 
^ Here the spirit of the supervisor is always present 
when work is being planned, he visits the teacher's 
room not merely every day but many times a day. 
Again, by use of the numbers, any point needing spe- 
cial attention can be easily noted and steadily stressed 
and regularly followed up by teacher and supervisor. 
Success and its excellent tonic effects will be indicated 
for the teacher as for the supervisor, and for the teach- 
er without the supervisor, as more and more of the 
excellences noted become characteristic of each day's 
work, characteristically present in spirit as well as in 
letter. 

By stressing one or more of the glaring shortcom- 
ings of a school or of a teacher, success is sure of at- 
tainment, encouragement will follow the smaller suc- 
cesses, and school, teacher and supervisor will be, per- 
meated and possessed of that finest spiritual attribute, 
awareness of honesty and sincerity of effort and con- 
sciousness of realization of the goal sought. Money 
can not buy such satisfaction, only the sincere desire 
in process of realization can confer it. 

The experienced teacher has such a standard for 
herself wrought out of her experience. The beginning 
teacher will be mightily helped by such a standard 
statement. The inchoate acquirements and attain- 
ments of the period of tutelage will be speedily clarified 
and defined in the process of experience if the standard 
table guides the experience and secures its gradual in- 
tegration into practice. 



CADET TEACHING 67 

The belief that, being a trained teacher, you need 
no supervision has received many hard knocks at this 
point, but they have not been frequent enough and 
have not been hard enough to make us realize that the 
theory learned in the normal school needs to be spe- 
cifically shown v^^Tiat is expected to be the form of the 
practice of the schoolroom. 

Was it not the recognition of this fact which has 
justified the process known in normal school as "critic 
teaching"? Cadet teaching has an unmistakable ad- 
vantage over every other form of teacher training just 
because it realizes the importance of applying criticism 
so as to make the practicing cadet self-critical rather 
than dependent on the crutch of supervisor's criticism. 
Growth in ability to be critical of self is the finest test 
of the growth of the teacher ; reading and passing ex- 
aminations on books of pedagogy may have this truth 
wrapped up in it as an assumption, but the truth very 
often fails to disclose itself. 

An unmistakable test of the success of supervision, 
therefore, is the making of the teacher desirous, will- 
ing and capable to criticise herself; that is, to apply 
the supervisor's criticisms. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Supervision of Instruction by a Teaching 

Principal. 

Usually the principal who has but few teachers 
and who must therefore teach all day himself feels that 
supervision is for him impossible. There is a form of 
supervision possible to such a principal which is far 
better than no supervision. 

Technically it might be called directed self-super- 
vision. That is, if the principal will talk the matter 
over with his teachers and if they will agree as to cer- 
tain improvements or changes in methods and pro- 
cedures which are to be inaugurated, the changes or 
innovations can be listed, each teacher provided with 
a copy of the list, and then each teacher keep a check 
on her own work as to the degree and extent of her 
own conformity with the changes agreed upon. 

The adoption of a regular supervisory scale of mer- 
its will usually folloM^ directly from such a start to in- 
corporate definite improvements. Most teachers will 
be quite willing to check up on their own work accord- 
ing to the list and to report to the principal what suc- 
cess has attended their efforts, and especially to ask 
questions concerning difficulties encountered. 

This questioning and discussion between teacher 
and principal is supervision of the best kind. Before 
school on some days, after school on other days and 
at still other times the teaching principal can arrange 
his teachers' conferences for supervision, can present 
his table of merits, can explain and define them, can 
inspire his teachers with a desire to embody in their 
work the excellences which he enumerates and defines, 
and can even help them to become self -critical so as to 

68 



PRINCIPAL AS SUPERVISOR 69 

pass judgment on themselves and to report to the prin- 
cipal what is their own judgment of their success. 
j Many principals who teach all the time have such 
^ a spirit among their teachers now. Many supervising 
principals have no spirit of gratitude for supervision 
among their teachers, much less a spirit of joyous self- 
criticism. The difficulty is not one of time alone. It 
is far more a difference of attitude of the principal. 
! If the principal's supervisory meetings and con- 
*^ ferences are helpful, the whole procedure will be wel- 
come; if his conferences are disheartening, the whole 
procedure will produce misery all around. Given the 
right spirit, and the teaching principal can institute 
and maintain very wholesome and effective supervi- 
sion begotten in the ideal spirit. 

The following form of card has been used with good 
results in all cases where teachers passed judgment on 
themselves : 

r/^ Teachers' Self-judgment Questions: 

To the Teacher: Your superintendent must form 
judgments concerning your work on the questions 
asked on this card, to make a report to the board of 
directors. Can you give a favorable reyort on your- 
self? If so, his work and your own will be very pleas- 
ant and satisfactory. 

I. CARE OF PROPERTY: Is there evidence of 

care for school grounds ? Out-buildings ? 

Furniture? Textbooks? Maps and ref- 
erence books? Flag and flag equipment? 

Ii: HEALTH AND COMFORT OF THE PU- 
PILS : Is light managed and controlled for best san- 
itary results? Is temperature of the room 

watched and regulated ? Is the ventilation 



70 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

cared for ? Are the pupils seated in seats and 

at desks suited to their size? Are sanitary 

precautions apparent about toilets, drinking water, 
cloak-rooms, etc. ? 

III. USE OF TIME : Is the time of the teacher 

used to best advantage ? Is the class time of 

pupils used to the best advantage? Is the 

seat time of pupils used to the best advantage ? 

Is the seat work and the home work of the pupils used 
in the recitation ? 

IV. RECORDS : Is the school register completely 

up-to-date in its entries ? Are the averages and 

percentages computed to date? Is there a note 

or record of visits to the school ? 

V. DISCIPLINE: Does it secure obedience? 

Does it lead to self-control and self-direction ? 

Is it an appeal to love of right or to fear of 

punishment? 

VI. INSTRUCTION: Is it suited to the devel- 
opment of the pupils ? Does it make pupils 

think or merely recall ? Is the teacher fol- 
lowing the course of study ? Is the teacher 

instructing children or is she teaching subjects? 

VII. TEACHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SUG- 
GESTIONS: Does the teacher try to understand 

suggestions or begin to offer excuses? Is the 

use and application of former suggestions evident? 

Are there signs of growth and improvement 

in the work of the teacher ? 

It is suggested that the teacher look over the card 
frequently and record her answers on a sheet of paper 
under each head. Progress will be shown by the in- 
crease in yes's. If desired, a percentage standing can 



TEACHER'S SELF-JUDGMENT 71 

be worked out so that the teacher is rating herself just 
as a superintendent rates his teachers. A percentage 
of less than 75 on this series of questions should make 
even a beginning teacher dissatisfied with herself. An 
excellent teacher would score 100 on a more searching 
and more exacting set of questions. 

Such a form modified to suit the principal's ideas 
is a good start. No principal need wait for an entire 
school system to start systematic supervision. Each 
principal, with the cooperation of his teachers, can 
institute supervision for his building. Nor need he 
wait for all the teachers to concur in the plan. A few 
teachers agreeing to the plan and helping to prepare 
the list of excellences is such a fine application of de- 
mocracy in supervision that all will become interested. 
Soon the help and encouragement received by the 
teachers who are cooperating will be reported to the 
non-cooperating, and the desire to "get into the game" 
will bring them in also. This is not mere theory ; prac- 
tice has demonstrated the truth of this statement. 

The teaching principal who thus initiates super- 
vision and gives it a good name in his school has proved 
his fitness for larger supervisory responsibilities, and 
may feel sure that his work is certain to be recognized. 
Supervision is destined to play an ever larger part in 
school administration, and the young man who is prov- 
ing himself a gifted supervisor, and who is learning 
the game by practice and by finding his own opportun- 
ity will be sought out for the larger responsibilities of 
supervision. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Supervision op Instruction: the Special Teacher- 
Supervisor. 

The first and foremost duty of supervision of 
teaching is to make the teaching more productive of 
development for the child; the child must be able to 
learn more in a given time with supervision than he 
could or w^ould learn without supervision. 

How shall this duty be most easily and most pro- 
lifically performed? This problem has confronted 
every school superintendent, or is confronting many 
superintendents, and will face every new man who 
comes into the superintendency. 

How shall teaching in the special subjects be made 
and kept fresh and vigorous? Many answers are pos- 
sible, and each will have virtue. No one answer will 
contain all the excellences. One successful attempt 
can be described in the expectation that it may help in- 
quirers and also in the hope that other students of the 
problem will feel encouraged to recount their experi- 
ences in this field. 

For the sake of definiteness and brevity the expres- 
sion special teacher-supervisor should be used. Brevity 
suggests teacher-supervisor. This will mean a special 
teacher who sometimes teaches a class to show how 
certain lessons should be taught, and who sometimes 
observes the grade teacher doing the work and then 
suggests modifications to improve the teacher's work. 

72 



SPECIAL TEACHER-SUPERVISOR 73 

The very large school system, of course, has the 
supervisor who never teaches a class but who depends 
upon special teachers to do that work. The small 
school system must get along with the teacher-super- 
visor, hence that procedure justifies this attempt to 
tell about one way to make the work produce results. 

How much time for teaching and how much for 
supervision ? How shall the teacher be apprised of the 
results of the supervision ? How shall the superintend- 
ent be informed of the results? When and how shall 
needed advice and guidance be given the teacher by 
the teacher-supervisor? When by the superintendent? 
These questions show just what must be described to 
make plain the form of procedure. 

The advantage of combining the special teaching 
and supervision of one subject or branch is that the 
quality of both the special teaching and of the super- 
vision is likely to be much better that way than to have 
one person act as special teacher and supervisor of sev- 
eral subjects for any unit smaller than the whole sys- 
tem. Both practices are in vogue, but there is no doubt 
as to the better plan. How shall the time of the teach- 
er-supervisor be apportioned between teaching and su- 
pervision ? 

No purely mechanical answer is satisfactory. It is 
usual to say one supervisory lesson to so many teach- 
ing lessons. This is a purely arbitrary, purely mechan- 
ical arrangement, an arrangement on a level upon 
which supervision works very poorly or not at all. 
Supervision is an art of the spirit, and spirit does not 
readily suit itself to mechanical restrictions. "It blow- 
eth where it listeth," we are told. 



74 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

The real artistic procedure is for the teacher-super- 
visor to teach the beginnings of topics or the critical 
aspects of topics, or the entirely new aspects of topics. 
The time units chosen are generally determined by 
the arbitrary division of school work into weeks. We 
have not thought it necessary to find out by experi- 
mental determination whether once a week is too often 
or not often enough or is just right for special subjects 
to be on the program, nor what is the maximally pro- 
ductive frequency of supervisory visits. Need for 
small outlays of school funds has had much to do with 
the matter of frequency also. If the visits are made 
infrequent, one supervisor can visit many teachers. 
The best way to make clear what can be done will be 
to tell it just as it might happen, since that is the way 
it has happened. 

Suppose a school system with 180 grade teachers 
who need to be directed in each of three special sub- 
jects, writing, music, drawing. On a purely mathe- 
matical basis, each supervisor can visit nine teachers 
on each of the 20 days of the school month, and will 
then visit each teacher once a month, seeing just nine 
teachers a day. Artistic variation is possible, so that 
occasionally ten or eleven teachers may be visited in 
a day. 

This will leave some other days with free time for 
special visits to rooms where there are substitutes or 
new teachers. Some such schedule is usually followed 
for the simple reason that that is the way it works out. 
This makes clear that prevailing practice is purely 
empirical, and will inform some superintendents that 
there is both need and opportunity to substitute trial 



BEGINNING SPECIALIZATION 75 

and experimentation so that the best way may be 
found. 

It is perhaps not presumptuous to risk the state- 
ment that eventually we will find that supervision has 
little correlation with calendar months and much need 
to regard the topic and subject unity of the special 
branches of study. 

One consideration that will need to be borne in 
mind very carefully is whether or not the school sys- 
tem which is at work on this problem is just starting 
special teacher-supervision, or whether the plan has 
been in operation for some time. Any school system 
which is just beginning the specialization in this way 
will need to impose relatively much special teaching 
and relatively little supervision. 

As rapidly as the teachers in the system acquire 
confidence and skill, so rapidly the special teaching 
may be diminished and the supervision increased. 
After several years, there should be very little need 
for much special teaching except with the new teach- 
ers taken into the system. If the teacher-supervisor 
works with that goal in view most of her special teach- 
ing will be called for and will be needed by new teach- 
ers who have had no training or no experience in teach- 
ing the special subjects. With these exceptions, it will 
generally be safe to let the teacher-supervisor decide 
for which teachers she should teach and how often she 
should teach. 

Some very successful teacher-supervisors teach for 
part of a period and let the room teacher take the class 
for the rest of the period. This is exceptionally good 
for the beginning teacher under a teacher-supervisor. 
Of course every school system that is careful to admit 



76 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

no teachers except those who have had training and 
experience in the special subjects, will reduce the 
amount of special teaching needed, but will have just 
as great need of supervision. 

Wherever found in a school system, the teacher- 
supervisor should find less and less need for teaching 
as she works longer in the system, unless each year 
brings a large percentage of new and untrained teach- 
ers into the system. 

An old-time description of a good teacher was, 
"The best teacher is he who most rapidly makes him- 
self useless (unnecessary) to the pupil." This is say- 
ing that the good teacher trains the child to help him- 
self more and more and to need less and less help from 
the teacher. 

This is exactly what the teacher-supervisor must 
try to do for the room teacher. If the room teacher is 
becoming stronger and more and more able to teach 
her own classes in the special branches, then the teach- 
er-supervisor is doing very good special teaching and 
supervision. 

If at the end of any school year the room teachers 
are no more capable in the special branches, and if the 
following year they will need just as much help as in 
the preceding year, then teacher-supervision has not 
helped the system at all, though the children have prof- 
ited, of course. As to supervision, the test of its success 
is whether or not it makes the teachers of the system 
better able to do work of a high degree of excellence. 
Shall the teacher-supervisor be a permanent part of a 
school system? 

One teacher says, "I can not teach drawing" ; an- 
other teacher insists that she can not teach writing 



INCAPACITIES OF TEACHERS 77 

successfully although she knows that she can teach 
arithmetic interestingly and successfully. Do such 
conditions justify the employment of special teachers 
to make up the incapacities of the non-singing, non- 
writing, non-drawing teachers? 

To say "yes" will saddle a rather heavy expense 
upon the school system. If the room teacher is not 
learning to do the work under the guidance of the 
teacher-supervisor, it seems like a clear waste of money 
to hire a special teacher while the room teacher does 
nothing. Therefore good housekeeping forbids such an 
arrangement on the basis of permanence. 

Again, many room teachers object to the special 
teacher because there is damage to the order of the 
school due to the change of teachers. These two ob- 
jections should be enough to warn any one who has not 
begun the plan. Usually the new teacher can be better 
helped by a few special lessons in self-help from the 
teacher-supervisor. 

This problem is linked up with the problem of 
whether we shall in the future keep up the one-room 
one-teacher plan of development or whether we shall 
replace that form of organization with more and more 
of the platoon organization. If we follow the one- 
teacher one-room plan, then it will be increasingly re- 
quired that the room teacher shall do all the teaching 
work of her room except as the teacher-supervisor of 
special subjects may teach an occasional new lesson, 
let us say of some new and different phase of a special 
subject. 

The one-room one-teacher plan has its strength in 
the fact that it satisfies the child's feeling of unity of 
his consciousness and supplies his developmental need 



78 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

to see the relatedness of ideas, both within the specialty 
and of the specialty with other branches. No system 
which runs to "specialized" teaching in the grades can 
be even tolerably satisfactory in this respect. The fre- 
quent change of teachers during the school day, now 
for one specialty now for another, does not give the 
child the consciousness of unity and continuity of ex- 
perience and of learning, nor does it ever enable him 
to see the relatedness of knowledge unless he discovers 
it for himself. His over-specialized teaching thinks 
the work of teaching the specialty too important and 
generally the work of bringing out the correlations 
"is not my work." 

The special teacher will not admit and will not as- 
sume responsibility for instruction of correlation with 
other subjects with her specialty except incidentally, 
which is accidentally, which is almost never. 

Under this system the child passes through layers 
of consciousness each day, but the layers are separated 
by non-conducting strata of other experiences. To con- 
sciously realize his identity during the day's routine of 
changes of teachers and subjects, the child must be able 
to pass forward and backward through the day's ex- 
periences from time to time, must be able to feel and 
to be aware of the "ego" in it, or for him the "I" and 
"my" and "me" will not arise in consciousness. Then 
only his play is developing his awareness of his per- 
sonal identity. 

Hence the growing child needs to stay with one 
teacher so that all the day's lessons shall be tied to- 
gether into a single string of consciousness, as if the 
day's experiences had been a continuous moving pic- 
ture. The layer consciousness or the separate picture 



MODEL TEACHING 79 

plan of developing thought resembles the adult's awak- 
ening from a dream. Dream and actual experience can 
not easily be separated from each other. If it seems 
likely that the one-room one-teacher plan of organiza- 
tion is to continue, there is warrant for the organiza- 
tion of teacher-supervision in every school system that 
can afford it. 

The teaching duties of the teacher-supervisor are 
necessary because in every school system there are 
teachers, even some of long service, who can not teach 
the special subjects or who think and say they can not 
teach them. Hence the special subjects must be taught 
to the classes of these teachers by a special teacher, or 
the pupils must lose the instruction, which is not per- 
missible since supervision is under especial obligation 
to equalize the instructional opportunities of the chil- 
dren. 

Only the new presentation, or the presentation of 
new aspects or of nevv^ methods should be the teaching 
responsibility of the teacher-supervisor. The drill or 
necessary repetition of such lessons as music and writ- 
ing, or the completion of such work as drawing, should 
be the responsibility of the room teacher after observa- 
tion of the special teacher's start of the work and espe- 
cially after consultation with the teacher-supervisor 
as to the purpose and methods to be used in any case 
of series or set of lessons which together constitute a 
unit. 

While the teacher-supervisor is making these pre- 
sentations, is doing this model teaching, the room 
teacher must be observing the process so as to become 
capable of continuing the work begun or of repeating 
the exercise given. The teacher-supervisor is teaching 



80 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

to permit the untrained room teacher to become able 
to do her own teaching in the subject under the guid- 
ance of the supervisor. 

The success of the special teaching is to render the 
room teacher capable of doing the work in the specialty 
with guidance and direction by the supervisor. If the 
room teacher needs less and less teaching of her classes 
by the teacher-supervisor, then she is becoming strong- 
er and the system is becoming more stable and self- 
sustaining, since the less teaching the supervisor must 
do the more supervision she can take care of. Under 
the careful direction of the teacher-supervisor the room 
teacher becomes stronger, self-helpful and independent 
of crutches. 

The supervisory duty of the teacher-supervisor may 
require her occasionally to teach a type or model lesson 
or to present some new and recently developed feature 
of the special subject. Here the teaching of the super- 
visor will end. 

The more valuable service of the supervisor is to 
awaken belief in capability of achievement and desire 
of achievement in the special branch, to set up stand- 
ards of achievement suited to the conditions of the 
work in the school system, to bring to the teacher a 
reserve of knowledge and of devices which the super- 
visor possesses only because of better training and of 
longer experience. 

Although the room teacher is continually admon- 
ished to keep up to the times, the teacher-supervisor 
must assume this responsibility within the field of the 
specialty. The room teacher should read books and 
magazines, should attend institutes and conferences 
for new ideas and plans. So must the supervisor, and 



PROGRAM OF VISITS 81 

it is distinctly the supervisor's obligation to select and 
to adapt these new ideas to the previously adopted sys- 
tem. The supervisor made or helped to make the orig- 
inal plans; additions, changes, omissions from those 
plans are the supervisor's work. 

Given the 180 teachers, given teacher-supervisors 
in writing, drawing and vocal music, how shall the 
teaching-supervising be done to improve the teaching 
both present and future? 

First, a program of visits to schoolrooms must be 
arranged. This must show on which school day each 
supervisor shall visit each school building. This pro- 
gram must be made by the superintendent, or must 
certainly have his approval. Otherwise it will happen 
and happen frequently, that several supervisors will 
visit the same building on the same day or on follow- 
ing days. 

The time between visits of supervisors needs to be 
most exactly and most evenly distributed. Supervision 
must be stimulating and not irritating. "Oh, for a 
week of freedom from supervisors ?" was one teacher's 
prayer to her superintendent in a school system where 
the supervisors tried their best to suit their programs 
to each other, but felt at liberty to make changes when 
they pleased. A schedule rigidly adhered to is desir- 
able and necessary. 

What takes place when the supervisor visits a 
schoolroom? The supervisor observes the work of the 
teacher, makes notes and forms a judgment as to the 
worth of the work observed. To do any good this judg- 
ment must get into the teacher's possession. What 
shall be observed? What shall be recorded? How 
shall conference between room teacher and supervisor 
6 



82 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

be arranged? The form here inserted answers these 
questions. 

ANY SCHOOL DISTRICT 
Notes of{^P|^i|'^} visit of the Room of 

Miss teacher of 

grades, School, on 

a. m p. m 

19. . . ., a. m p. m 

I. SUPERVISOR: II, TEACHER: 

a. Taught Min. a. Taught Min. 

h. Observed Min. 6. Observed Min. 

NOTE — Check item or enter your judgment. 
III. RESPONSE OF PUPILS: 

a. Attentive d. Enthusiastic 

b. Try e. Indifferent 

c. Work hard / 

IV. ATTITUDE OF TEACHER: 

a. Enthusiastic c. Neutral 

6. Interested d 

V. RESULTS OBSERVED THIS VISIT: 

a. Excellent d. Unsatisfactory 

b. Satisfactory e 

c. Improving / 

VL CONDITIONS FOR WORK: 

a. Favorable 6. Unfavorable 

c d 

VIL MADE SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER: 

a. Yes? b. No? 

Vin. FORMER SUGGESTIONS USED: 

a. Yes? 6. No? 

IX. TEACHER MADE SUGGESTIONS TO SUPERVISOR: 

a. Excellent c. Not usable 

6. Usable d 

X. TIME FIXED FOR CONFERENCE WITH TEACHER: 
Date? Hour? Place? 



REMARKS: 

Signature .... 
Supervisor 
Special Teacher 
of 



JUDGMENTS OF TEACHERS 83 

Obviously all teachers visited and observed will be 
judged on the same points. Variability of the super- 
visor and supervision is thus as nearly eliminated as is 
humanly possible. This judgment of all teachers of a 
system on the same points is local standardization. 
Each superintendent and supervisor can modify or 
substitute as seems to him wise and desirable. The 
points as shown in the foregoing form have been found 
comprehensive enough for supervisors and entirely 
satisfactory to teachers. 

No comparison of teachers is fair or significant if 
it merely records "fair" or "satisfactory" or "excel- 
lent," if the one term is to represent the teacher's com- 
plete characterization by the supervisor. As observa- 
tion proceeds and as the judgments are formed, the 
supervisor enters them according to the judgment 
formed. If the terms listed seem inadequate, the super- 
visor may select another, so that dead level of mechan- 
ical procedure is obviated, and spontaneity is given a 
fair chance. 

The gain to the teacher, to the supervisor, and to 
the system is beyond the belief of most persons who 
have not worked under such a system. The teacher 
learns at once just what is the supervisor's opinion, 
for an original copy on white paper is given to the 
teacher as her property, and a duplicate yellow sheet 
made by using carbon paper under the original sheet 
while it was being written, remains in the supervisor's 
possession to be later filed in the office where the super- 
intendent can look up any teacher's record in any of 
the special subjects. 

The supervisor discharges her obligation immedi- 
ately by handing the judgment to the teacher, and also 



84 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

immediately begins to plan how to help the teacher. 
The superintendent can also immediately start to com- 
mend or to correct the teacher. The children profit 
since the teaching becomes better, and the system 
profits because the teacher is becoming a better teach- 
er. If the teacher needs more time and help than a 
swiftly spoken word, the conference of supervisor and 
teacher can be definitely fixed. The check is just as 
real on the supervisor as on the teacher. 

To report the room teacher a failure at the end of 
the term will be more embarrassing to the supervisor 
than to the room teacher if the periodical observations 
of visits to the teacher's room show good work or show 
no suggestions made and no conferences held with the 
teacher. The replies to items VII, VIII, IX and X will 
be most helpful to the superintendent. Item X makes 
sure that the teacher's own native capabilities and 
powers shall not be disregarded nor depreciated. Thus 
both teaching and supervision are vitalized and invig- 
orated. 

At the end of the month the supervisor makes a 
monthly report to the superintendent on this form: 



MONTHLY REPORT 85 

ANY SCHOOL DISTRICT. 

Monthly report of 

Supervisor 

Special Teacher of 

for the school month, ending 

19 

1. Number of days spent visiting schools? 

2. Number of days spent in office work? 

3. Number of days absent from work? 

4. Number of regular visits made? 

5. Number of special visits made? 



6. Number of rooms whose results were satisfactory or bet- 

ter? 

7. Number of rcoms whose results were unsatisfactory or 

worse? ". . 

8. Write names of teachers and schools whose work is notably 

improving, on the back of this sheet under the heading 
VIII. 

9. Write the names and schools whose work is unsatisfactoiTr 

or worse, on the back of this sheet under the heading IX. 

10. No. of rooms where conditions were favorable? 

Unfavorable? 

11. Suggestions given to teachers: number "yes"? 

"no"? 

12. Number of lessons taught? 

13. Number of lessons observed?. . .* 

14. Number of teachers' meetings held? 

15. Number of conferences held with individual teachers?. . . . 

16. Number of teachers made suggestions to supervisor? 

17. Enter remarks on the back of this sheet. 

18. Have you replied to all the questions? 

Respectfully submitted, 

Supervisor. 
Place 

Date 19... 



86 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

From this report by the supervisors the superin- 
tendent can learn just which teachers are growing and 
which standing still. Here commendation is proper 
and always productive. Suggestion for improvement 
may be and usually is productive if the suggestion is 
concrete and practicable. 

To the careless and indifferent teacher the reports 
will guide the supervisor without loss of time. The 
prophet Nathan's rebuke to David was crushing be- 
cause the prophet could say to David, "Thou art the 
man." Slowness or slackness of teachers is promptly 
detected and can be quickly made the subject of a spe- 
cial conference. 

In the conference, the teacher discovers the super- 
visor's wider experience, wider grasp, and the fuller 
knowledge. The teacher can supplement her own 
knowledge of subject or of ways and means by draw- 
ing on the supervisor's and even by drawing on the 
superintendent's if that be still broader and longer 
than the supervisor's. Thus the teacher will have more 
to give the children, and the system is stronger be- 
cause all of its resources become available for every 
need. 

To the superintendent the notes of observations 
which the supervisors file in their card index with the 
teacher's record, are most informing, as are also the 
items of the monthly report. If items 5 and 11 were 
very small or entirely blank, what would that tell the 
superintendent about the supervision? Every sum- 
mary of the month's visits as reported by the super- 
visor is a great enlightener to the superintendent as to 



FORM OF PROCEDURE 87 

the work not only of the teacher but of the supervisor's 
also. 

If teaching is improved, if the teacher is made 
stronger, if the supervisor is made more alert and more 
studious in devising the right kind of guidance to give, 
and if the superintendent is wiser and better in- 
formed as to the school system, have we not here a 
form of procedure which makes teaching, supervision, 
and superintendence productive? 



CHAPTER X. 

Ethical Relations of Supervised and Supervisor of 
Instruction. 

Since supervisor and supervised are human beings 
engaged in a human occupation, there must be certain 
rules or principles of right which regulate or control 
the relations of these two persons in their work. The 
supervisor has rights, as being in authority and re- 
sponsibility. The supervised also must have rights 
growing out of the imposed obligations and duties. 
Supervisorship assumes larger knowledge, more varied 
experience, acquaintance with a greater variety of 
facts, better preparatory training in possession of the 
person clothed with authority to direct the work of 
instruction. 

Since the common aim, the vitalization of instruc- 
tion, must animate both supervisor and supervised, 
the better preparatory training must have included 
"the art of instruction"; it should also include wider 
human experience. From this superior equipment of 
the supervisor the supervised will be able to get help 
when needed, will be glad to accept suggestions and 
directions when proposed, will confidently invite crit- 
icism, and will cheerfully accept condemnation if need 
be. The supervised may be and often is entirely the 
equal of the supervisor in earnestness and devotedness 
of purpose, in diligence of application, in sympathy 
and in enthusiasm for the work. 

Mere difference in rank or authority is sometimes 
the conception of supervisor and supervised. This 
understanding of the relation is entirely wrong and 
wholly mischievous. Neither supervisor nor super- 
vised can hope to give the best service to the child 

88 



AUTHORITY IN SUPERVISION 89 

and the school with such an erroneously conceived idea 
of the relation. 

Authority will very infrequently be the recourse 
of the good supervisor. Instead, wider knowledge, 
finer skill of adaptation, will win acceptance and adap- 
tation of the supervisor's directions or suggestions. 
Should irreconcilable difference of opinion arise, then 
authority must be exercised, and even then "a certain 
sweet reasonableness" is the better way because it is 
the more enduring way. 

The supervisor who relies entirely upon power and 
authority to secure compliance with directions and sug- 
gestions, will, of course, utterly disagree with the con- 
siderations stated in this section as applying to the 
work of the supervisor and supervised. Teachers (the 
supervised) are very sure that there should be very 
explicit agreement on the points covered by the prin- 
ciples enumerated. Many supervisors are willing to 
admit the need for observance of some of the princi- 
ples. 

Simple truth compels the statement that the super- 
visory office is in process of determination and of de- 
limitation. Some time we shall probably come to an 
agreement or formulation of principles of right or 
ethics which should control supervision of instruction. 
Agreement has not yet been reached if it has been un- 
dertaken. 

Inquiries from supervisors disclose the fact that 
some supervisors have no awareness that such prin- 
ciples might exist, and others are ready to admit that 
they observe a few clearly recognized principles in 
their practice. The better and best supervisors observe 
all the principles hereinafter enumerated even if they 



90 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

are not fully conscious of just why they do as they do. 
Mostly, when asked the reason for some form of pro- 
cedure, the reply comes, "Because that is the way I 
should like to be treated." The reply shows respect 
and obedience to the very highest ethical requirement, 
namely, to the Golden Rule of the Master. 

In a code of professional ethics adopted tentatively 
by the Pennsylvania State Educational Association this 
provision occurs: "The superintendent should be rec- 
ognized as the educational expert of the system. His 
recommendations should be followed in matters per- 
taining to the school policies, the selection of textbooks 
and teachers, and the formation of the course of 
study." 

Here we have the assertion of the authority of 
the supervisor which was stipulated in a foregoing 
paragraph. "His recommendations should be fol- 
lowed," has direct application to the suggestions and 
directions which will be given to teachers in their 
capacity as governors and instructors of the school. 
Recalling that supervisors may be the superintendent 
or any person clothed with supervisory authority like 
the superintendent's authority, our problem becomes, 
"To what circumstances, conditions, or procedures 
does the 'should be followed' apply?" 

"Should be" applies to these considerations: 

1. The supervised has the right to know on what merits, 
excellences, or faults the work of the teacher is to be appraised 
or judged. The supervised has the right to know just what is 
expected. This imposes the obligation of information, explana- 
tion, illustration on the supervisor. On the supervised it im- 
poses effort to know, to learn and to understand and appreciate 



DIFFERENCES OF OPINION 91 

the requirements of the supervisor. "I did not know that was 
expected of me," can not be put forward as an excuse or a self- 
justification if both supervisor and supervised fully meet the 
obligation of this first need for fair play on both sides. 

2. The supervised has the right to a difference of opinion, 
but must support it by reference to authority or to accepted and 
established practice, or by unquestioned excellent results of the 
variant practice. Pending an adjustment of the difference of 
opinion, the supervisor's opinion must prevail and must be put 
into practice unless the supervisor makes a different suggestion. 
Meanwhile supervisor and supervised should each be busy in 
search for fuller and firmer confirmation of the several opin- 
ions which are in conflict. This principle must be acknowledged 
so that the individuality of the supervised shall not be entirely 
smothered and suppressed. The supervised may be right; what 
a gain to that school system to have that acknowledgment and 
to have the right practice, method or facts incorporated in the 
work of all the teachers! 

3. The supervised has the right to know what is the opin- 
ion of the supervisor concerning any work observed. This alone 
puts the work on a basis of intelligent effort to continue the 
commendable, to remedy the remediable, to discontinue the con- 
demnable. This opinion may be imparted in a conference or in 
writing, but in one way or another it is the due of the super- 
vised. Failing to deliver such a judgment, the supervisor falls 
under suspicion of being incapable of suggesting anything bet- 
ter, or even of non-acquaintance with the excellent since it has 
failed of recognition or commendation. 

4. The supervised has the right to expect a suggestion for 
the improvement of anything that has been condemned in prac- 
tice. Mere faultfinding is not supervision. Just as the child 
should gain something each day he is in school, so the teacher 
should gain something from each visit of the supervisor. Wise 
indeed is the supervisor who imposes this obligation; who con- 
demns what is condemnable but only after having commended 
the commendable. Each has value for better work after the 
visit. 



92 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

5. The supervisor must just as surely commend the com- 
mendable as condemn the condemnable. Assurance in well- 
doing is one of the best rewards to give the teacher. It costs 
nothing but an exertion of the sense of appreciation of the 
supervisor, and if properly seasoned is not dangerous. Some 
supervisors say that praise spoils teachers. These same super- 
visors are not averse to accepting praise for their own work; 
are we to assume that the praise has a deteriorating effect ob 
them? Then why fear to praise teachers who deserve it? 

6. The supervised has the right to know when the super- 
visor is coming to observe the work. Unexpected visits to 
teachers' schoolrooms, unannounced entries into schoolrooms, 
have been assumed to be unquestioned rights of supervisors for 
ail the years of supervision. If the supervisor's visit means a 
disarrangement of the day's program of work, the supervised 
must know in advance of the supervisor's coming so as to pro- 
vide for the needed readjustment of the program. Even if the 
visit is that of the superintendent who expects the regular order 
of exercises to be followed during his visit, the supervised still 
has the right to expect to be informed in advance of the visit. 
If this seems too radical a departure from the ordinary unan- 
nounced, "detective," supervisory visit, it may be proposed that 
at least half of the supervisory visits should occur by pre- 
arrangement. That would equalize the chances of the teacher 
against the "suspicions" of the supervisor. 

7. The supervised has the right to conferences v/ith the 
supervisor; some conferences before supervision; some confer- 
ences after supervision; some conferences before and after the 
term begins; some conferences on Saturdays; but most of these 
needed conferences should be in school time, at the expense of 
the school system, since the conference is for the betterment of 
the school work. 

8. The supervised has the right to ask for a second trial for 
any work that the supervisor finds unsatisfactory, if the super- 
vised feels that circumstances were not favorable to highest 
effort. The second trial will necessarily be by prearrangement 
for the observation. 

9. The supervised is under obligation to conquer fear and 
nervousness attending the visit of the supervisor. If super- 
vision brings help and resource, fear and nervousness will easily 



JUDGING TEACHER'S WORK 93 

pass into gladness to see the helpful friend. In every large 
school system supervision is necessary, therefore teachers must 
accustom themselves to the supervisors' visits. Fear of a 
supervisor is best overcome by cari-ying out the suggestions 
made on a preceding visit. That will bring commendation from 
the supervisor, and commendation is the specific antidote for 
teachers' fear and nervousness of supervisors. 

10. The supervised has the right to expect all her teaching 
work to be seen and valuated when the composite judgment of 
her work is to be fixed. No single visit by the most expert 
supervisor can do the teacher justice. A single class or recita- 
tion may have been observed during the visit. That may be the 
lesson or subject in which the teacher has least spontaneous 
interest and enthusiasm. All her work should be judged only 
after observation. The subjects for which she has natural 
enthusiasm and aptitude must be seen and judged as surely 
and as fully as the subjects which she admits she does not like 
as well as the others. 

11. The successful teacher has as much right to supervision 
as the weak teacher. Otherwise she never secures her need of 
encouragement and commendation. Some supervisors entirely 
neglect the best teachers and spend all their time with the weak 
teachers. This is wrong from every point of view. The weak 
teacher needs most attention and help, but it is hardly encour- 
aging to be made conspicuous for weakness by continual visits 
of the supervisor while other teachers are never visited. In 
this aspect of the obligations of supervisors we discover the 
most convincing proof that supervision and the ethics of super- 
vision has not become very clear. Not time enough for real and 
complete supervision is permitted in any school system, so 
supervisors continually justify the neglect of the capable teach- 
ers by the excuse, "There is not time enough to visit all, so I 
Tisit those who need it most." When it arrives, the supervisory 
system of the future will provide substitute teachers who will 
be used to free teachers for conferences with supervisors in 
school hours. Then supervisor and supervised will profit by the 
conference and will draw strength and inspiration from it as if 
it were an Antaean contact. 

12. The young or beginning teacher has the right to receive 
help, advice, counsel, and suggestion before supervision, so as 



94 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

to avoid criticism after supervision. This right has been little 
recognized and observed even in teacher training schools. Yet 
the best work of supervision may be done here. Crudeness and 
imperfections can be taken out of plans and outlines before a 
fault has been committed; responsibility of supervisor and su- 
pervised becomes equal and rests on both; failure of the plan is 
guarded against; success of the effort is much more probable, 
and the supervised gets the best tonic in the world, that is, a 
measure of consciousness of success confirmed by the super- 
visor's commendation. 

13. The supervised has the right to expect the supervisor 
to convey and to impart knowledge of newer and better ways 
of doing the work, of acquainting tlie supervised with progres- 
sive developments of subject matter, and of later and better 
methods of instruction. The supervisor must accept and must 
discharge this responsibility. The supervisor can do it. If it 
be left to the supervised, results will be divergent and various, 
when they should be unified and concentrated to a single end. 
Therefore the supervisor must be held responsible for the in- 
troduction and incorporation of newer and later ideas. 

14. The supervised has the right to expect allowance to be 
made for the conditions under which the work is being done. 
Usually this has been observed and conceded, but instances are 
not wanting in which the supervisor blamed the supervised for 
unsatisfactory results due to untoward conditions, which were 
entirely out of the control and direction of the supervised. Lack 
of spelling books in one school was not accepted by a supervisor 
for failure of the class to pass spelling: "You should have had 
the words written on the blackboard," urged the supervisor. 
"We did that, and found at the end of the term that many 
words had been put on the blackboard incorrectly and were thus 
spelled by the children." This provoked a quarrel which led to 
the dismissal of the teacher, a manifest wrong to her. Obvi- 
ously, when the shortage of spelling books was discovered it 
should have become the obligation of the supervisor to see that 
spelling books were supplied, or failing in that, to give direc- 
tions which would have given the teacher a fair chance to meet 
her obligations. 



CONDEMNATION BEFORE PUPILS 95 

15. The supervised has the right to expect allowance to be 
made for the fact that no teacher can be an enthusiast in every 
subject. Any teacher will admit as fair a comparison of her 
work with another teacher who is not a specialist nor an expert, 
but teachers feel it is unfair to be expected to teach drawing 
with the enthusiasm of the expert supervisor in drawing, and 
so on. Many young supervisors make a bad start at this point, 
especially with experienced teachers. The supervisor will reach 
a safe and sane judgment at this point if she will ask, "Howl 
would I wish to be judged in some branch which is not my spe- 
cialty?" 

16. The supervised has the right to be treated with con- 
sideration and respect before her school or class. No teacher 
should be criticised or condemned before her pupils. This of- 
ficial crime and social sin has long been recognized and even 
abhorred by good supervisors, but it is still sufficiently frequent 
to require mention and condemnation in any discussion of ethics 
of supervision of instruction. Similarly, the supervised must 
not condemn nor ridicule the supervisor. Respect and the show 
of respect must be mutual. Differences of opinion must be con- 
sidered and discussed privately in conference and agreement 
arrived at. If then the supervised cannot agree with the super- 
visor, there is but one ethical course left; the supervised should 
ask to be transferred or should resign. 

These rights and reciprocal obligations are not con- 
tractual, as is well known. They are purely ethical, 
that is, they rest entirely upon the consideration of the 
question, "What would you like if you were in her 
place?" A clearly judicial attitude of mind is needed 
on both sides to reach a common and acceptable judg- 
ment. 

Thus contemplated, there can eventually be but one 
answer in almost every case. If the relation of super- 
vised and supervisor is to become impersonal and pro- 
fessional, then these considerations and such others as 
experience shall disclose and clarify must be generally 
recognized in our thought, discussion and practice. If 



96 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

supervision is ever to get away from a predominance 
of personal considerations, and if it is ever to rise to 
the higher plane of purely professional considerations, 
then the ethical principles that govern supervisor and 
supervised must be everywhere regarded and observed. 
Where differences of opinion arise, if the difference 
is not reconcilable into an agreement, the supervisor's 
opinion must prevail, of course, but the supervisor with 
discretion, with large knowledge, with sympathy for 
human nature, and with the ability to appreciate an- 
other person's point of view, will be glad to use an eth- 
ical basis for the accommodation of differences of opin- 
ion, and will be glad to avoid the harsh and unsym- 
pathetic exercise of arbitrary authority. The work of 
supervisor and supervised will be made more substan- 
tially satisfactory by elevation to the professional 
plane through observance of ethical principles. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Personal Versus the Professional Attitude 
Toward Supervision. 

Are there two attitudes? What are the character- 
istics of each? Which is more common? Is either or 
are both natural? Acquired? Is either predominantly 
a masculine or a feminine trait? 

A profession requires a body of knowledge, scien- 
tific knowledge, in possession of one who applies that 
knowledge, and the application is an art or a profes- 
sion. Teaching or instruction has a body of knowledge 
called methods of teaching, and the application of 
those to the process of instructing children gives us 
the art of teaching. 

For reasons which can not be discussed here, not 
all teachers can get know^ledge and skill in the use of 
methods of teaching before they assume the duties of 
the office, hence need arises for some official to bring 
the untrained and inexperienced into possession of the 
knowledge of methods and into practice of them as 
speedily as possible. The office of direction, of guid- 
ance, of encouragement, arises hence, and we have the 
supervisor of instruction charged with that duty. 

The supervisor is appointed because he represents 
much training and long experience in both science and 
art of instruction. To the sum of the knowledge ac- 
quired by training he adds much knowledge and skill 
from his experience. Hence it follows that the super- 
visor has knowledge, training and professional experi- 
ence before becoming a supervisor. 

97 



98 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

By reason of this knowledge, training and experi- 
ence, the supervisor has a wider outlook, a deeper in- 
sight and more practical judgment of values than the 
young teacher. Therefore the supervisor is given au- 
thority to direct, to modify, to initiate, as his judgment 
directs. The supervisor thus has two influences to 
give the office importance and standing, what he is as 
an official (authority), and what he can wield as the 
member of a profession. 

The teacher has all of the possessions of the super- 
visor, probably in lesser degree. The authority given 
the teacher relates to the child, just as the supervisor's 
authority relates to the teacher. Both teacher and 
supervisor belong to the profession which applies the 
science of education through the art of teaching. That 
much is clear and will probably not be disputed or 
questioned by anybody. 

Professionally both are committed by a sacred duty 
to so apply the science of instruction that the child may 
most quickly a7id most economically get what the 
schools have for him to learn. This does not include 
all the teacher's responsibilities, but in the field of in- 
struction that is her obligation. To see that such an 
application of the science of education is actually made 
becomes the duty of the supervisor. 

What therefore is the professional attitude toward 
supervision ? 

First, the teacher will enter into the aims and pur- 
poses of the supervisor. 

Second, the teacher will give the supervisor sin- 
cere support and full confidence. 

Third, the teacher will accept directions and sug- 
gestions as given her to promote instruction, that is, 
to enable her to teach most in least time. 



PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDE 99 

Fourth, the teacher will not regard criticism as a 
personal matter, but will regard it entirely according 
to its adaptability to the end of improving instruction. 

Fifth, the teacher will not give thought to the 
agreeableness or disagreeableness of the supervisor 
until she has studied out the value of the suggestions 
or criticism for the improvement of instruction. 

Sixth, the teacher should forget unlikable or dis- 
agreeable features of the supervisor by thinking of the 
the good advice and of the practical assistance ren- 
dered by the supervisor. 

Seventh, every teacher should be loyal to the super- 
visor whether the supervisor is or is not personally 
liked by her. 

Eighth, every teacher should seek advice and help 
from her supervisor for her difficulties. 

When the teacher thinks of herself and her rela- 
tions to the supervisor and of some other teacher, she 
is on the ground of personal relations and not on the 
ground of professional relations. When the teacher 
thinks of the supervisor in terms of her likes and dis- 
likes she has entirely departed from professional con- 
siderations and is entirely on the ground of personal 
relations. When she thinks of her supervisor in terms 
of "Daddy Smith" she is not only on purely personal 
grounds but is on personal grounds that are damaging 
to her. "Daddy Smith" has much professional accom- 
plishment to his credit, or he would not be a super- 
visor. For that he is entitled to respectful considera- 
tion as a fellow teacher. 

The fact that he has been given the office and the 
responsibility of supervisor shows he is held in esteem 
by the directors and their friends. That too entitles 
him to respect. The many kind and encouraging words 



100 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

he has spoken to teachers in trouble and distress also 
entitle him to respectful and grateful consideration. 

The teacher who thinks of her supervisor entirely 
in terms of her relations to him is very narrow and 
very selfish. The supervisor has just the same kind 
of relations to scores and perhaps hundreds of teach- 
ers. From the very nature of the case she should see 
that it is almost impossible for the supervisor to think 
of his relations to any teacher in personal terms, but 
is compelled to think only of the professional relation, 
that is, the relation in which personal consideration 
is the secondary and not the primary consideration, 
because the supervisor does not know the teacher as a 
person at all but only as a teacher. 

The teacher who thinks of the effect on her welfare 
as a person first is receiving her supervisor's proffered 
help on personal and not on professional grounds. Of 
course it is depressing if the supervisor does not com- 
mend the teacher's work, but that depression should 
first be regret that the teacher has not risen higher 
and gone ahead faster in her mastery of professional 
teaching skill. The regret that the poor opinion v/ill 
not bring an expected raise in classification and thus 
result in salary increase will come, must come if the 
teacher be human, but the regret should appear only 
after the sorrov/ and disappointment on professional 
grounds has waned. 

The highest plane of professional attitude toward 
supervision is required by the teacher who has done 
her best, has continuously and consistently tried to 
use the supervisor's suggestions and directions and yet 
can not secure the supervisor's commendation for su- 
perior or excellent work. 



TEMPERED SUBMISSION 101 

It requires not only a professional attitude but a 
sublime resignation to have reached your highest level 
and to have made your best effort, then to be told that 
your best is not professionally the best, and then to 
keep on doing your best even after that. Of some ex- 
perienced teachers this resignation and supreme sub- 
mission to the fact of a limited natural endowment is 
necessary. 

The Edisons and Burbanks are not numerous. No 
generation has yet produced more than one Thomas 
Arnold or more than one Mark Hopkins. Tempered 
submission and resigned acceptance of limitation has 
for its converse a finely tempered, sober rejoicing in 
the fact of high commendation by the supervisor. 

The professional attitude toward success permits 
rejoicing but not exultation over a less richly endowed 
guild brother. The exultation at once lowers the ex- 
perience to the personal level. The professional atti- 
tude permits the acceptance of power and skill of an 
order below the highest, but it does not permit sulk- 
ing and spiteful criticism of the supervisor ; the latter 
is purely personal feeling. 

Very solid satisfaction is possible to teachers under 
supervision if they will cultivate the professional atti- 
tude toward it. When supervisory criticism is not so 
favorable it will be accompanied by suggestions of help. 
The suggestions may and probably will improve the 
work. Higher professional standing comes next, thence 
purer professional attitude. 

If the teacher is sure she has dons her best and if 
the supervisor can give no further suggestions, the 
teacher will find it easily possible to accept the judg- 
ment "good but not excellent." She must remember that 



102 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

the supervisor sees and judges all kinds of work all 
the time. Some teachers are getting the judgment 
"excellent." If not given to her she must be able to 
accept the fact professionally and believe that if the 
supervisor thought her v^^ork "excellent" he would say- 
so. That state of mind may be a very satisfying one. 
To think of the matter in terms of disappointment and 
to blame the supervisor for partiality is to make ready 
for unhappiness and even poorer work as a conse- 
quence. 

Recognition that the teacher is doing her best, that 
that best is satisfactory to the supervisor, and is doing 
much for the children, makes the recognition of limita- 
tion supportable with a smiling face and a glad heart. 

The teacher should regard the supervisor with a 
feeling of deference such as she expects from the 
parent. The teacher expects the parent to defer to her 
in matters affecting the child's schooling. The teacher 
has the professional point of view, or at least she tells 
the parent so if any question arises as to whether she 
knows more about education as a process. 

Precisely the deference which the teacher expects 
the parent to show to her, that deference she owes to 
the supervisor, and for precisely the same reason. The 
supervisor has had more training and more experience 
hence must be assumed to know more professionally 
than the teacher, and because of this greater knowledge 
and larger experience the supervisor has a right to 
expect and to be accorded professional respect and 
consideration from the teacher. 

The teacher should show and should express grati- 
tude to the supervisor for help proffered. Although 



APPRECIATION 103 

the relation is official, and it may fairly be assumed 
that the supervisor owes it to his office and to the child 
to help the teacher, it is a gracious and grateful act to 
thank the supervisor for help given, even if there be 
the obligation to do so. 

At the same time that the supervisor is giving help 
to the teacher as owed to his children, he is giving her 
personal help ; she can profit by the suggestions at any 
time and in any other position in the future. His help 
is increasing the value of the capitalized experience 
of the teacher. She should realize this and be grateful 
for it. Also, it is entirely proper for the teacher to 
express appreciation of the supervisor's general poli- 
cies and plans. No supervisor is so entirely 'self-satis- 
fied that words of appreciation from his teachers are 
not appreciated. 

If the expression of appreciation is mere flattery, 
then the act is on the personal, selfish level ; it is syco- 
phancy and is offensive. If it is sincere esteem of the 
wisdom and excellence of the supervisor's policy, and 
if it is expressed sincerely as admiration of the excel- 
lence, it is on the professional level and is entirely war- 
ranted. Appreciation of this kind generally does the 
supervisor as much good as it does a teacher to have 
her work appreciated. 

The supervisor is entirely human, and likes appre- 
ciation, although many teachers think he should be 
able to get along without appreciation, and be satisfied 
with the species of savagery which they think he is 
practicing, namely, the savagery of making cutting 
criticisms. A most pleasant way of expressing appre- 
ciation was that of the teacher who said, "We are al- 



104 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

ways glad to see the supervisor. His visits always 
help both of us, the children and me." 

Most damaging of all attitudes of teachers toward 
the supervisor is that of hostility and opposition. This 
makes the teacher uncomfortable because it is taking 
a mean advantage, and she can not be much of a 
teacher if doing mean acts does not make her uncom- 
fortable. 

Also, it hurts the teacher's power for good. She 
is doing mean things rather than good things. Her 
power grows in the direction of her actions; this 
is unavoidable. Some teachers will not do mean things 
but they think and say means things, doing it out of 
spite. No spirit of generosity can be nurtured and 
strengthened by the exercise of the spirit of selfishness 
and meanness. Figs could more easily grow on 
thistles than the teacher who is continually acting 
from a mean and malevolent spirit toward her super- 
visor could in all her other conduct be an example of 
fairness and generosity. The mean thoughts and acts 
toward her supervisor are a poison to all her thoughts 
and acts. Pollute the spring and every one that draws 
water from it quaffs a poisonous draught. 

One form of disrespect and depreciation of the su- 
pervisor is to treat his criticisms and suggestions with 
disrespect and contempt on the theory, "He can not 
esteem me any less than I esteem him or his opinions" ; 
as if the teacher's contempt for the supervisor were 
at all to be compared with the supervisor's low esti- 
mate of the teacher. His opinion is professional, or 
should be. The teacher's is personal. His opinion will 
help the teacher with other supervisors if good, or 
harm them if poor. 



CONTEMPT FOR SUPERVISOR 105 

The teacher's opinion of the supervisor will prob- 
ably have little effect on the standing of the supervisor, 
but will instead bring the teacher under suspicion for 
prejudice, unprofessional conception of the relation, 
and into contempt for unprofessional conduct. Teach- 
ers perhaps have not realized the truth of that state- 
ment as they might and as they should realize it. 

To think poorly of the supervisor because he does 
not commend your work as highly as you think he 
should, is not at all getting square with him. One 
teacher thought and said so. "He has nothing on me," 
she boasted ; "he can not think less of me as a teacher 
than I think of him as a supervisor." She thought 
that her remark and her feeling brought them to a 
common level. Not so. She had brought herself to 
a very low and common level. Her remark was purely 
and entirely personal spite. Not a particle of con- 
ception of the professional relation is evident. He is 
the supervisor. 

He has the office, and the authority. He has the 
experience and the training. His opinion would be 
accepted in any usual case and situation rather than 
the teacher's just because he has had larger experience 
and has wider knowledge and because his opinion is 
not likely to be tinctured with any regard for effect 
upon self. It is too well known that some teachers try 
to silence the voice of conscience by such an assumed 
contempt for the supervisor. He has condemned and 
corrected their practice. Conformity with his sug- 
gestions requires labor and exertion. The labor and 
exertion are repugnant. The criticism implies a short- 
coming; but has the teacher not taught school "accept- 
ably" for these many years? Then who is this young 



106 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

upstart of a supervisor that teachers of long experi- 
ence should be corrected by him? It is far easier to 
treat his judgment with contempt, and to disregard 
the suggestions. 

The teacher who pursues this course is preparing 
the way for great unhappiness. The individual teacher 
who finds herself in this position, and who is prac- 
tically alone in it, should take herself in hand seri- 
ously and by dispassionate self-examination determine 
just what is the trouble. Poor supervision exists, just 
as poor teaching exists. Teachers need not treat the 
poor or the counterfeit article as if it were the excel- 
lent and the genuine. 

The supervisor represents an office of great dignity 
and of great importance and all official conduct should 
show the respect and the consideration which is due 
the ofl^ice. Personal friendship with the supervisor 
is still a matter of personal choice. To respect the 
office and the officer does not carry the obligation of 
including the official among your intimates and per- 
sonal friends. Just because this affected depreciation 
of the supervisor is in reality self -depreciation every 
teacher should help another teacher whom she finds 
making this deplorable mistake to correct it. The 
teacher's poor opinion of the supervisor does not cancel 
the supervisor's poor opinion of the teacher. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Supervision of Instruction. 

I. Division of Responsibility. There are two quite 
distinct points of view as to the proper division of 
responsibihty for supervision of instruction. The pre- 
vailing view favors supervisors and assistant superin- 
tendents, who are to visit the schools, observe the work, 
criticize the teachers, and direct the teachers' meetings. 
From the point of view of organization this appears 
direct, logical and simple. As will appear in the dis- 
cussion, the scheme has several very serious weak- 
nesses. 

The other view, which is regarded as rather novel 
and visionary, is that the superintendent work with 
and through the principals and supervisors to reach 
the teachers, and further serve as a court of reference 
and appeal for principals and supervisors. Against 
this view is urged the objection that the superin- 
tendent does not meet the teacher, and that it tends 
to arrange responsibility in layers or strata which in 
turn tend to become fixed into an official caste system. 
The two forms of procedure deserve statement in de- 
tail. 

The superintendent of a system is the chief directing 
officer. Next to him stand one or more assistant super- 
intendents. These assistants usually do the greater 
part of the supervision of instruction. The work may 
be divided between the superintendent and assistants 
on a subject basis or on a territorial basis; if subject 
basis, then one supervises the English and related 

107 



108 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

work and another the arithmetic and related work, 
and so on; if territorial basis, then one visits the 
schools in one section and the other in another sec- 
tion of the territory. The special subject teachers or 
supervisors pass around among their quota of schools 
at some fixed frequency, and meet the teachers directly 
for any conferences that may be needed. Some very 
thoughtful person may notice that the principal is 
almost entirely left out of this scheme insofar as 
supervision is concerned. 

Usually, grade meetings of teachers are held 
monthly, let us say, and the superintendent or an 
assistant or a supervisor directs the teachers' meet- 
ing, sometimes for purpose of demonstration, some- 
times for purposes of instruction, sometimes for the 
explanation of a syllabus or outline of work. The 
principal may or may not attend the meeting of teach- 
ers and supervisor. If he does not attend, and usually 
he is too busy to get to the meeting, it is assumed 
that }m already knows everything that the leader is 
to say and hence need not be present but can use the 
time to better advantage in administrative duties. 

When the principal thereafter tries to supervise, 
he may find and often does find that his directions 
and suggestions are different from those given in the 
teachers' meeting; contradictory directions destroy 
confidence of the teacher in supervision and are a 
fruitful source of irritation. 

Under this plan many principals calmly accept the 
situation and make little effort to supervise as they 
prefer administration to the repeated reply from 
teachers when given a suggestion, "That is not what 



UNITY OF PURPOSE 109 

the supervisor told us to do," or, "That is not the way 
the supervisor said it was to be done." We are in 
danger of making the principalship a wholly admin- 
istrative function. 

This will be a serious impairment of the possibili- 
ties of supervision. The principal is the only super- 
visory agent at hand for immediate help to the teacher 
in any situation of distress. We should carefully re- 
member this fact. For very much the same reason 
that the child in the grades is best off with one teacher 
for all his subjects the grade teacher is best off with 
but one supervisor for all her work. Unity of purpose, 
continuity and relatedness of the work are easily se- 
cured and retained under one supervisor. These two 
considerations outweigh any other claims that can be 
made for supervision of the teacher solely by the 
supervisors. 

The superintendent in this scheme is a sort of free 
lance who visits and supervises also as time and incli- 
nation make possible, so that some teachers at least 
are also visited by the superintendent. Conferences 
of superintendent and supervisors are also a part of 
the scheme, so that the superintendent's plans may be 
carried out into the system by the supervisors and 
special teachers. 

This is necessary and wise. Without such an ar- 
rangement supervision could not be made to contain 
anything of the superintendent's thought, purpose or 
power. Added to this form of transfer of ideas is 
the institute which is conducted by the superin- 
tendent. The class for professional study is also 
a part of some schemes. These activities and form 
of communication and inspiration comprehend about 



110 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

all that is generally included in a supervisory organi- 
zation. Undoubtedly it has produced and is pro- 
ducing very good results in many places where the 
personality of a superintendent would breathe life and 
impart vigor to almost any form of organization and 
procedure to pass on the afflatus of steady ze^l and 
high purpose in the work of teaching. 

It is conceivable that a system of supervision might 
be organized with no more and no different officials 
which should easily maintain and retain unity of aim 
and purpose, consistency and harmony of direction and 
suggestion, and intimacy of relation which will satisfy 
the supervisor and put the teacher's feet on stable 
and firm ground for her work. 

In this plan the superintendent and the assistant 
superintendents serve as the directors of the principals 
and the supervisors, and also as a bureau of reference 
in cases of difference of opinion between teachers and 
principals or teachers and supervisors, or as the final 
judge in cases where principal or supervisor are in 
doubt as to the work or method of any teacher. Prin- 
cipals and grade or special supervisors must in turn 
hold conferences before the discussion of the superin- 
tendent's instructions are transmitted to the teachers. 
The principal should be present and should participate 
in every conference of his teachers with the super- 
visors. 

Thereafter, the supervisors should visit the teach- 
ers to observe work, but all suggestions, directions, and 
modifications of plans that are given to any teacher 
should be made in the presence of the principal unless 
after a conference of supervisor and principal the lat- 
ter feels it best to let teacher and supervisor talk over 



HARMONY OF DIRECTION 111 

the matter alone first. The principal should know 
about the matter and may need to talk the situation 
over with the teacher afterward. 

Harmony of direction and suggestion can not be 
otherwise attained, and if there is contradiction be- 
tween principal and supervisor, one or the other suf- 
fers in the estimation of the teacher. The teacher feels 
uncertain, and because of the contradiction and uncer- 
tainty feels fully justified in drawing the conclusion, 
"Since the authorities differ and disagree, I may as 
well follow my own way." Fatal state for supervision, 
and unhappy fate for the teacher, when such condi- 
tions arise or already exist. Instead of the grade 
meeting of the teachers of a certain supervisory unit, 
there will be meetings of teachers by school buildings 
under the principal. These may also be grade meet- 
ings, but the unifying principle is the supervisory re- 
sponsibility of a principal. 

The principal may call a supervisor, an assistant 
superintendent, or the superintendent to attend the 
meeting for the purpose of elucidation, but in every 
case the principal must remain in the meeting, must 
assume responsibility for the directions delivered, and 
must be given the authority to hold the teachers re- 
sponsible to himself directly. This magnifies the 
office of the principal, of course, but not unduly. It is 
rather a return to the primary and original dignity of 
the office. 

The superintendency must be able to maintain its 
dignity through the length and breadth of its vision, 
and through the inherent excellence and power of ap- 
peal of its suggestions. No statesman in the world 
needs larger skill and power of diplomacy than a school 



112 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

superintendent needs in reaching his teachers through 
the principals and supervisors. 

The delimitation of the principal as supervisor 
should be clearly made and continually kept in mind. 
Of necessity, the principal has many administrative 
duties. Of them it is no part of this discussion to treat. 
The principal as supervisor alone belongs to this field. 
For the proper performance of the supervisory duties, 
the principal must be freed from all clerical work. 
Very little of the desk work which now takes so much 
time of principals counts for supervision. It is purely 
administrative. Clerical and stenographic assistants 
are the right way to release the principal so he may 
become .the right kind of a supervisor. 

He needs large training and preparation in theory 
and practice of education for supervision, and here is 
meant not administrative experience solely, but real 
professional preparation and practice in supervision, 
perhaps in postgraduate schools and courses. The 
principal who has not done that or who is not willing 
to do that is making the tacit admission that he has 
not conceived the possibilities nor the responsibilities 
of the supervisory part of the principalship. 

With time at his command, the principal must visit 
the classrooms of all his teachers, and must be sure 
to vary the times of his visits so as to see all the sub- 
jects taught. He must commend the teachers who are 
doing good work by the integration of their genius and 
enthusiasm into the suggestions, plans and directions 
of the superintendent, supervisor and of the principal 
himself. He must make suggestions of improvement 
for the work that is not satisfactory, or he may ask 
questions about procedures that will lead the teacher 



EXCELLENCES OR DEFECTS 113 

herself to see and to work out the correction. He must 
stop waste of time, of effort and of school property. 

Then he must be responsible to the superintendent 
for the final judgment on the worth of the work of his 
teachers. If he is in doubt, he may call in the super- 
visor of a special subject or the superintendent to con- 
firm or to correct his judgment. Any special excel- 
lences or defects discovered by the supervisors of the 
special subjects should be reported to the principal, 
so that he may make the necessary addition or subtrac- 
tion in evaluating the teacher's work. From the prin- 
cipal's evaluation or decision the teacher has the right 
of appeal to the superintendent. 

The sole justification for this plan of distribution 
of supervisory authority is the fact that principal and 
teacher can have frequent conferences both before 
supervisory visits and after supervisory visits, and in 
any special emergency that may arise. That principal 
is in a very disagreeable position who must say, "Do 
it this way until the supervisor comes and then ask 
him." The direction of the principal should be the 
teacher's chart. If the principal feels the need of 
submission of the matter, he may quite properly 
refer the matter to the supervisor or superintendent, 
and then modify his suggestion if necessary. 

The difference between these two ways of getting 
a question settled is more than a difference of order 
in the sequence of reference. The principal should 
be fitted to answer the question as supervisor or super- 
intendent will answer it, because he knows their 
thought in the matter; he is intelligent about their 
desires and hopes. There is mutuality in aims, plans, 



114 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

and hopes and there is unanimity, harmony and ac- 
cordance in their directions. 

This makes the teacher satisfied to do as directed, 
makes the principal strong in his realization that he is 
attaining the joint aims of superintendent and super- 
visors and makes the superintendent realize that the 
system is working pleasantly and smoothly. Repres- 
sion of the originality and individuality of the prin- 
cipal are real dangers ; the conferences afford the 
principal all the chance he needs to get his ideas con- 
sidered and included in the plans and directions. 

The development of school systems brings with it 
the several stages through which supervision has 
passed in many places or through which it is now 
passing in many other places. Everything started 
from the one-teacher school. Then came a teaching 
principal ; next came a supervisory principal ; finally, a 
superintendent and supervising principals. 

From this point all varieties of development have 
followed. The analysis of responsibilities has every- 
where made the superintendent responsible for origi- 
nation, direction, and for final decisions. The office 
carries large responsibilities, and needs to be relieved 
from much of the routine of administration just as 
does that of principal to be free to discharge its super- 
visory obligations, namely, the direction and inspira- 
tion of supervisors and principals to become hopeful, 
enthusiastic leaders of the battalion divisions and 
groups. 

The superintendent who measures his results in 
terms of number of teachers visited has not seen the 
vision of the possibility of inspiration and invigoration 



DISTRIBUTION OF TIME 115 

communicated to teachers by torch-bearers who have 
kindled their torches at the altar fires. 

II. Distribution of Time fo7' Supervision. Use 
of time for supervision of instruction raises two diffi- 
cult questions: How frequently should a teacher be 
visited, what should be the length of the visit? After 
these two questions have been answered a third ques- 
tion arises, namely, should there be a schedule of 
supervisory visits so that the teacher may know when 
the supervisor is coming and make the necessary shifts 
in the program? Investigation discloses that super- 
intendents everywhere have an established opinion and 
routine in these adjustments as to time, but they vary 
greatly in different systems of schools. 

Supervision like instruction should be regular, a 
supervisory visit once so often. Partly because the 
week seems a natural alternation of our work-rest 
cycle, we have gotten to arrange supervisory visits 
once a week or once in two weeks. Cost of supervision 
has been a force which tends to reduce the frequency 
of supervisory visits, which is another reason why the 
principal should be the chief supervisory officer in di- 
rect contact with the teacher. His supervisory visit 
entails no loss of school hours in travelling streets or 
riding in cars. 

Just what frequency would be best theoretically we 
can not tell because no one has really studied the ques- 
tion. About all we know is that teachers do not care 
to have the visits too frequent, say daily or semi- 
weekly. Perhaps we shall find when we study the 
matter carefully that frequency depends on the temper 
of the supervisor, of the teacher, and also on the na- 
ture of the study or work to be supervised, that is on 



116 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

whether the unit of work (say the topic) changes as 
frequently as weekly. 

The length of the supervisory visit is also a matter 
of importance. Generally the supervisory visit should 
be as long as a class period so as to see an entire lesson 
through or so as to start a unit of work which may be 
reviewed at the next visit. The rule for special super- 
visors or teachers of subjects like music, drawing or 
writing, is that the visit should be long enough to start 
a new phase or exercise or to watch the teacher start it, 
so as to commend the right kind of start or to suggest 
correction if needed. The start of a new exercise or 
of a new procedure, let us say in singing, may take 
ten minutes or it may take twenty minutes ; whatever 
it takes on the average must be the length of the super- 
visory visit. 

The arrangement of the schedule of visits of super- 
visors in any system employing more than one super- 
visor is very important, so important indeed that it 
must be made by the superintendent. Visits to any 
school or room of two different supervisors on the same 
day are mischievous. If the supervisors arrange their 
own schedules there is the possibility of choice of 
schools near trains and trolleys at the close of the day 
for several supervisors, to mention but one difficulty. 

The schedule of visits of the supervisors should be 
given to all the supervisors and to all the principals, 
and should be known to the teachers so as to arrange 
the program of work on any given day to bring the 
special subject at the hour when the" special supervisor 
is to be in her room. A weekly visit by each of three 
or four supervisors would be manifestly unwise. That 
is too much supervision, since it means a daily re- 



PROGRAM FOR VISITING 117 

aiTangement of program for the teacher. A super- 
visor}^ visit once every third or fourth day has in prac- 
tice been found only very slightly annoying to a few 
teachers and not at all annoying to many teachers. 

The opinion of superintendent and supervisors in 
any system must also be considered. Usually every 
supervisor is sure that his special subject or field is 
most important and most difficult to handle, and there- 
fore needs most time and most visits, so that the super- 
intendent finds it necessary to intervene, make the pro- 
gram of supervisory visits and decide the matter even 
if one or another of the supervisors is displeased and 
disappointed. A miniature program of this kind may 
help to make the matter clear : 

Dates of Visits by Supervisors. 

No. of Vocal Physical 
School — Rooms Writing Drawing Music Training 

Heddon 18 Jan. 14 Jan. 21 Jan. 28 Feb. 4 

and 15 and 22 and 29 and 5 

Simmon 24 Jan. 16, 17, Jan. 28, 29, Feb. 4, 5, Feb. 11, 12 

and 18 and 30 and 6 and 13 

Nye .... 2* Jan. 18 Jan. 30 Feb. 6 Feb. 13 

This is allowing eight or nine visits per day per 
supervisor. If time for conference of the supervisor 
with the teacher after the lesson is to be allowed there 
should not be over seven visits per day scheduled for 
any supervisor. If possible to secure, the supervisor 
of drawing should be allowed more time so that prepa- 
ration of class and of materials for use in the class 



* The small Nye school is put on the schedule for the last 
of the three days given to the large Simmon school, because 
proximity of the two buildings permits this economical use of 
the supervisors' time. 



118 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

period be not always stolen from the preceding reci- 
tation. 

This prepared schedule makes it possible to appor- 
tion the loss of time by holidays, vacations and to keep 
the work going smoothly all the time. Without this 
schedule, neither supervisors nor teachers know what 
to do or what to expect after an unexpected break in 
the work, as after a quarantine. 

Some superintendents make the schedule for the 
entire year, but that deprives the plan of the needed 
flexibility. Loss once incurred can not be retrieved. 
A monthly preparation and distribution of the sched- 
ule affords the maximum of advantage ; losses incurred 
any month can be made up the next month. Instances 
are known by which a given school missed its super- 
visory visit in music for three months because it hap- 
pe'ned that on the days when the supervisor of music 
was to come the school was closed either by a local 
quarantine, very stormy weather or because of illness 
of the teacher. 

Whether the superintendent should schedule his 
visits to teachers will perhaps seem a foolish query to 
ask. If the superintendent wishes to make sure that he 
shall enjoy the supervisory visits, he will go to see 
none but good teachers, and he will be entirely safe to 
let them know he is coming. If he wishes to get a quick 
view of a large part of the system he will pay brief 
unannounced visits to a large number of teachers. 
If he wants to help a teacher who needs help, and who 
has had the benefit of help from principal and special 
supervisor, then it will be a great kindness to the 
teacher to tell her he is coming to help. 



UNANNOUNCED VISITS 119 

The unannounced visit of the superintendent has 
been regarded as the height of supervisory skill. 
Hence, it may be dangerous to question the wisdom, the 
propriety or the ethics of the custom. Undeniably it 
is justified for teachers who are known slackers in 
their work, and who can be kept up to their best effort 
by the expectation that the superintendent may come 
at any hour of any day. An extreme case of this view 
was a superintendent who always kept his absence 
from home a profound secret until after his return 
home so that his teachers should not slack up during 
the absence. Surely this is small confidence in teach- 
ers ; the superintendent confesses that he has not done 
more than develop eye-service, that is, service only 
under espionage. 

If this is a reflection on the teachers, as is most 
likely the case, it is a condemnation of the superin- 
tendent himself. He may be a fine mechanician but 
he is not a supervisor who inspires honest effort or who 
invigorates sincerity of purpose to do faithful work. 
If the teachers can take it easy and escape detection, 
they feel they have been smarter than he. 

The practice of letting teachers know that the 
superintendent is coming is a custom with many good 
superintendents. More superintendents will adopt it 
as the work of supervision is more and more conceived 
from the professional point of view. Superintendent 
and teacher must move away from the personal con- 
sideration, and must move toward the professional 
consideration. Professionally the teacher has the 
right to know when the supervisor is coming, not 
merely that she may do her best, but so that she shall 
feel that she has been treated fairly and honestly 



120 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

rather than that she is held under suspicion as a con- 
temptible slacker. 

III. In Large mid Small School Systems. Just as 
every living organism is a miniature universe, so every 
school system is the exact counterpart of any other 
system. The needs of the small system are the same 
in kind and degree and differ only in number from the 
needs of the largest systems. Every system of schools 
needs supervision of the instruction just as it needs 
administration of executive duties. 

The main difference between the large and small 
system as to supervision of instruction is that in the 
small system one person must discharge manifold 
duties. In the large system the multiplication and ex- 
tent of the needs in quantity compels increase in the 
number of persons needed to get the multiplied duties 
performed. Specialization of duties becomes possible 
and desirable. 

The small system has perhaps only a principal who 
is also supervisor and special instructor. The largest 
systems find it necessary to have assistant superintend- 
ents, supervising principals, special supervisors, special 
teachers for each building for the several special sub- 
jects. Regardless of the amount and extent of the in- 
crease in the working force and regardless of the ex- 
tent of the specialization in the instruction and super- 
vision, to secure the maximum benefit from the super- 
vision, its organization must be in accordance with the 
principles applied in the section treating of organiza- 
tion of supervision. 

Leadership must come from the superintendent, 
must extend to the principals and supervisors by con- 
ference and contact with the superintendent, and must 



LARGE AND SMALL SYSTEMS 121 

be taken to the teachers by the principal and super- 
visor. In the small system the teaching principal starts 
from himself acting as superintendent and passes on 
the influence to the teacher, acting as if he were super- 
visor or acting in his capacity as principal. Directions 
are harmonious, unified, and fitted to the situation. 
Conference between teacher and the proper directing 
official is easy to arrange and is therefore reasonably 
sure to occur. Conference before and after supervisory 
visit can be arranged with little difficulty and without 
inconvenience or loss of valuable time. 

The only difference between the large and the small 
system is that in the large system it is a little difficult 
to get the person discharging any special function to 
recognize the fact, and in the small system it is difficult 
to get the person to realize the importance of each of 
the many different functions he performs. The prin- 
ciple is easy to apply after it has been clearly con- 
ceived, and there should be no perplexity connected 
with determining the duties and no complications in 
determining the responsibility of any official in either 
a large or small system. 

IV. The Grade Teachers' Meeting. The course of 
study or the hand-book of a school system shows the 
teacher what is to be done. Grade by grade, the school 
subjects are allotted for the children to learn, such and 
such parts each year. As a general plan this is very 
good. One difficult question presents itself to the 
teacher who is new in a system: "When is she to be- 
come familiar with all the subjects that she must 
teach?" Also, if the course is not swiftly to get out 
of touch with the changes in circumstances in the 
world, how are the new phases of subjects to be gotten 



122 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

into the instruction? Also, if the school practices are 
not to fall into a paralyzing routine, how shall plans 
for timely changes or introductions or substitutions be 
laid before the teachers? The system is under obliga- 
tion to make the chances of all the children equal, hence 
it may not follow the best practices at some schools 
and outworn and decadent practices in other schools. 
All the children must have the best. For the reasons 
indicated and for many others, it becomes necessary 
for the superintendent and the supervisors to meet the 
teachers. When is the best time to hold such meetings? 
What is the best use of time for them? For most pur- 
poses the grade group meeting is best. It may be the 
teachers of a building, or of a number of buildings in 
the same section of the city or district. If assembled 
by grade groups, as two adjoining grades, let us say 
first and second grade, both superintendent and all 
the supervisors can pass from group to group in alter- 
nation, give brief explanations which apply equally to 
both grades, and accomplish much in little time. The 
more supervisors, the more grade groups can be con- 
ducted at the same time. Thus four supervisors and 
a superintendent can conduct five grade groups at the 
same time, and each supervisor meet and instruct each 
grade group all in a forenoon. If the entire body of 
teachers is too large for such a meeting, the same kind 
of meeting can be held at several centers on successive 
half-days. This imposes multiplication of labor for 
the supervisors, since they must go over the same in- 
structions for each grade group at each center. If 
groups of teachers become much larger than thirty, 
the best results will follow from meetings at centers 
which make a twenty or thirty teacher group possible. 



GENERAL MEETINGS 123 

In the very large groups teachers will not talk freely 
and informally. Such meetings will be necessary about 
once a month if as short as thirty minutes. An occa- 
sional general meeting with a leading address by a 
prominent citizen, will be a most pleasing variation. 

j The justification for these meetings is the fact that 
the children's chances are to be equal. Any child in 
the system is to have as good a chance as every other 
so far as the schools can attain such ideal justice. That 
all the teachers have the same directions, are given the 
same helps, the same contacts with stimulating forces, 
requires these meetings. Finally the child gets the 
benefit. Effort in learning is made successful and time 
required for learning is reduced to the minimum by 
reason of these meetings. To make it possible for the 
child to learn more in less time is to extend his period 
of usefulness in the world. 

What shall be the nature of the grade meeting of 
teachers for supervisory purposes? Let there be no 
confusion of the grade meeting with the teachers' in- 
stitute or convention. Each of these has a function 
and an opportunity which the grade meeting can not 
usurp, just as the grade meeting has a duty which 
neither of the others can afford opportunity to dis- 
charge. In the order of importance the duties of the 
grade meeting are these: 

1. To secure statement of teachers' difficulties either in the 
month just passed or expected in the month just opening. If 
written and handed in, these questions can easily be made the 
most valuable part of the meeting. 

2. Calling on teachers who are known to have successfully 
handled any difficulties raised for their answers to the ques- 
tions. This brings to each teacher the combined resources of 
the group, which is a wealth of resource much greater than 



124 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

that of any superintendent or supervisor. What a loss to a 
system to leave this wealth of resource entirely untapped? If 
these two phases of the meeting be fully matured and realized, 
every teacher will come gladly and will go away helped and 
strengthened. Why shall one teacher despair when other teach- 
ers are succeeding? Suggestions from the superintendent or 
supervisor are accepted and regarded as matters of course. It 
is expected that they should know more than a teacher. But 
when another teacher contributes the new or helpful sugges- 
tion, how much more stimulating to the ambition of all the 
other teachers: "If Miss Smith can do that thing, why should 
not I be able to do it?" 

3. Demonstration lessons by members of the group. 

4. Reports of visits to other successful teachers. 

5. Directions and suggestions by the superintendent or the 
supervisor for the next month's work. 

6. Topics for the next month's meeting handed in by the 
teachers and these topics assigned to teachers for discussion 
at the next meeting. 

The superintendent will do well to make the grade 
teachers' meeting a round table discussion of existing 
difficulties within the system. It should not be a nor- 
mal seh€>©i or college or university class. The grade 
meeting is to open the road, remove the obstructions, 
level up the unevenness so the learning process may 
travel smoothly in the car of progressive success. 

Of a thirty minute program, ten minutes should 
suffice for the directions and suggestions for two ad- 
joining grades by any one supervisor. The other 
twenty minutes should be given to questions and 
answers by the teachers, and this much time will be 
alw^ays and easily consumed after the meetings have 
actually started. A first or second meeting of this 
kind may lag unless the supervisor has prepared ques- 
tions for consideration if the teachers should ask none. 
After a first experience, there will be questions enough. 



GRADE TEACHERS' MEETING 125 

and the greatest astonishment will come to teachers 
and supervisors at the philosophy, the wisdom and the 
resources of the grade group of teachers. 

The grade teachers' meeting has proved a sore per- 
plexity to many superintendents. The need for the 
meeting, and just what the meeting should accomplish, 
were clearly enough seen, but how to manage the meet- 
ing so that the desired results should be certainly se- 
cured, has not always been an easy matter. 

Should it be conducted like a lecture, with the su- 
perintendent or the special supervisor acting as a nor- 
mal-school or college professor? Shall it be a lecturer 
or instructor from the outside? Shall it be a demon- 
stration of actual school work by a successful teacher 
with a class of her pupils? Or shall it be any one of 
a variety of things besides those already mentioned? 
All of these ways of running such meetings have been 
tried, and with some degree of success, too. 

If v\^e should reflect on the purpose of the grade 
teachers' meeting, we would probably find the prin- 
ciple or principles which should control the choice of 
exercises and the make-up of the programs. The grade 
teachers' meeting should not be an extension class, 
although it may quite properly be a continuation class. 
Teachers' institutes, summer schools, extension courses 
and even correspondence courses have a claim on the 
teacher, and the school system acts wisely if it en- 
courages teachers to profit by these various opportuni- 
ties of growth. 

The grade teachers' meeting is manifestly a part 
of the organized work of supervision of instruction, 
and therefore it must concern itself with the problems 
and perplexities of supervision. Unitj^ of aims ; se- 



126 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

quence and continuity of procedure; adaptation be- 
tween pupil, subject, and method; equalization of op- 
portunity under the diversity of differences of school 
population ; incorporation of the new ideas of a chang- 
ing world with an older body of material ; from this list 
and from other problems of supervision within the 
system must the subjects of discussion and considera- 
tion be drawn for the grade teachers' meeting. 

The topics for discussion may grow out of the ob- 
servations of the supervisor or out of the experiences 
of the teachers. If the teachers will ask questions dur- 
ing the meeting, or will propose topics from time to 
time for subsequent meetings, the proper end and aim 
of the meetings are being attained in form at least. 
If the answers to questions can be drawn from the 
teachers in the meeting, as an exchange of experience, 
then the entire resource of the group of teachers be- 
comes a joint possession, and each teacher can draw 
on the experience of each other teacher in the meeting. 

Such a grade meeting capitalizes the separate or 
individual experiences of the teachers and makes the 
combined capital much greater than the mere sum of 
the collective experiences. The confidence and assur- 
ance of each teacher in the merit of her work may easi- 
ly become the assurance and confidence of all the teach- 
ers. Here at least the whole is greater than the sum 
of all the parts. 

Often chapters of books or articles from journals 
and magazines may be used to help to give answers 
to questions raised by the teachers. Demonstrations 
of procedure by especially skilful teachers may be used 
at a grade meeting, especially if some new method or 



LECTURE PLAN MEETINGS 127 

plan is to be illustrated, or if some perplexity of pro- 
cedure can be best illuminated by a demonstration. 

Except in cases of speakers from outside of the 
system, the lecture plan of grade meeting should be 
avoided. It is no excuse to say "If we do not get a 
speaker from the outside our meetings drag." Then 
the acute needs of the system are either not known or 
are not being considered. The plan of a paid lecturer 
for a grade teachers' meeting, except to start some- 
thing new, is a confession that superintendent, super- 
visors and teachers can not find nor determine the im- 
mediate problems of the system, or fear to undertake 
the solution of their own problems. No system of 
schools is without its definite supervisory problems. 
The teachers all know the problems which are related 
to their own field. They may not realize them as com- 
mon needs, or they may feel too diffident to ask about 
their perplexities. Usually after the first meeting or 
two conducted as a true experience meeting, the hesi- 
tation gives place to a readiness to ask questions and 
to relate experience that will help some questioner. 
Discouragement should not depress after one or two 
meetings which have seemed slow. 

Teachers are both glad to help if they feel assured 
that their recounting of experience will be a real help, 
and they are also ready to ask questions if they find 
the effort to reply to their questions to be serious and 
sincerely prompted by professional readiness to help. 
Fear of criticism or of unkind remarks is forgotten 
in the joy of doing good. 

For example, an appeal for questions for a seventh 
and eighth grade meeting brought out the suggestion 
that the teaching of simple interest was troubling 



128 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

one teacher. This was made the topic for discussion 
at the next meeting, and proved interesting to all the 
teachers of the group, although only about five of the 
group were teachers of arithmetic. 

Shall we teach one method or more than one meth- 
od? What method or methods shall we teach? Shall 
the wishes of the commercial department of the high 
school be regarded as the final arbiter of which method 
shall be taught? Shall the method used by the banks 
be the only method taught? These questions and others 
like them came from the teachers, as did most of the 
answers. The meeting aligned the simple interest 
teaching for the system as no syllabus or outline could 
have done. The discussion had made the best pro- 
cedure too unmistakably clear. 

The problems of the moment in any school system 
are the right problems to occupy the time of the grade 
teachers' meeting. There are always enough of these 
in any system, regardless of whether the system be 
large or small. If its own problems can be defined and 
considered, the grade teachers' meeting will be 
strengthened and profitable to the teachers. Evidence 
of professional alertness and of professional growth 
can be better marked and measured by the teacher's 
participation and contribution to the grade teachers' 
meeting than in any other way. Superintendents soon 
discover this after they start to hold the right kind of 
these meetings. 

Frequency of grade teachers' meetings raises a 
problem of more importance than is usually ascribed 
to it. Once a month or twice a month, which shall it 
be? Is once a week permissible or necessary? Dif- 
ferent systems have difiterent frequences. Once a 



PART TIME MEETINGS 129 

month is perhaps most widely prevalent. As often as 
the needs of the system demand is not a safe rule. 
There should be some regularity, so that teachers will 
keep their time open for the meetings, and not make 
engagements with their dentist or oculist or music 
teacher. Attendance of the grade teachers' meeting 
should be regarded both as a serious duty and as a 
precious opportunity. If the spirit of "freely give 
because freely ye receive," animates the meeting and 
each teacher, there will be no trouble about the attend- 
ance. 

Whether to hold the meetings in school time or out 
of school time is a very practical question. Since the 
outcome of the meetings is greater benefit to the chil- 
dren, there is justification for the use of school time 
for the meetings. Should the school term be short, it 
will probably be objected to by parents and board 
members that the term is short enough without mak- 
ing the children lose the time consumed in grade teach- 
ers' meetings. Law and practice are rapidly setting 
the precedent that use of school time with pay for the 
teachers is both right and wise. 

It is hardly fair to expect the teacher to give her 
own time for meetings whose avowed purpose is to 
wrestle with problems that are peculiar to that system. 
A modification consists of the use of part school time 
and part teachers' time, without loss of pay to the 
teacher. That certainly is equitable, since the teacher 
will be able to take with her, if she wishes to leave the 
system, a great part of the benefit secured from the 
meetings. The meetings capitalize not only her own 
experiences on difficulties, but give her also the ad- 
vantage of the experience of her co-workers, which 



130 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

subtly and unconsciously vivifies and extends her own 
experiences, as has already been said, by more than 
mere addition. 

The grade teachers' meeting, held about once each 
month, devoting earnest effort to clarify and to solve 
the problems and perplexities which arise in the school- 
rooms during the month, partly at the expense of the 
board of directors and partly at the expense of the 
teachers, is an indispensable part of any school sys- 
tem which claims credit for well organized supervision. 
There is no substitute for it. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Supervision of Instruction: Growth of the 
Teacher and Supervisor. 

Much has been said and written as to the need of 
the teacher to keep alive intellectually and to grow 
professionally. It seems to be generally assumed that 
the supervisor is sure to do so without the constant 
admonition of professors of education. Complacency 
of some supervisors may also be an explanation ; they 
have reached the highest position in the educational 
system, why need they work further? 

Argument can add nothing to the axiomatic prop- 
osition that it is just as necessary for the supervisor 
to keep on learning and absorbing ideas as it is for the 
teacher. If it is uninviting for the child to drink from 
a stagnant pool, as Arnold of Rugby implied, is it not 
just as uninviting for the teacher to be forced to re- 
sort to resources of stale and out-of-date ideas? 

The superintendent and supervisor should keep this 
question ever before them. Before making a speech 
on the importance of growth for the teacher, the super- 
intendent should take himself into a corner and re- 
hearse the new ideas which he himself has learned or 
v/orked out during the last year. This self-examina- 
tion would considerably soften the rigor of some super- 
intendents for growth of their teachers. It may be 
that not growing themselves and dreading stagnation 
for their system, they try to put the responsibility for 
fresh ideas on the teacher. If the system is to be a 
growing and developing system, the superintendent 
and the supervisors must also be growing. 

131 



132 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Many ways of promoting growth of teachers have 
been tried. The summer school, the Saturday course, 
even the correspondence course has found a vogue. 
These are to the purpose, even if not the best plan. If 
academic growth of the teacher is the end sought, then 
these agencies are the best available. If professional 
growth is desired, there is a better way than summer 
school and post-graduate courses. 

To make this point clear, just consider the differ- 
ence of attitude of the student under training and the 
teacher at work in a schoolroom. The aspiring teacher 
while yet a student studies books, listens to lectures, 
notes recommendation or observes practice work under 
direction. The ideas taught and the suggestions made 
are expected to be accepted by the students on author- 
ity of the book or the lecturer. Unconsciously the 
learner assumes the attitude of accepting upon faith 
the practice recommended. Unquestioning docility is 
the characteristic attitude of the teacher under train- 
ing in a professional school. 

The inexperienced learner has no standards by 
which to choose the warranted dicta from the unwar- 
ranted. He accepts what he is told, he jots it into his 
note book, and when he wants to use the idea does not 
know where to find the note book. Exceptions to this 
statement exist, of course, but it is a true statement 
as to many teachers just fresh from the training school. 
They have accepted methods and devices upon the 
authority of the book or the instructor. 

What is the contrasted condition when the teacher 
in service is to receive further professional training? 
In service, the teacher prepares her plans and devises 
her procedures in accordance with the instructions re- 



CONTINUATION TRAINING 133 

ceived in the preparatory school (if she can recall them 
or if she can find her note book or her textbook) or 
with those given by the superintendent. 

The outcomes serve as a check or test of the sug- 
gested plans and devices, and she speedily separates 
the excellent from the poor. Value depends upon re- 
sults secured. Authority for a recommendation or 
suggestion may avail to induce a trial. Successful re- 
sults alone establish its value. This implies a reserva- 
tion of judgment, an open-mindedness for the observa- 
tion of results. Disposition and capability to evaluate 
worth of a suggestion by outcome is the cardinal dif- 
ference of attitude of the teacher in service. 

When results are not a fulfillment of prediction or 
of expectation, they will be so appraised. According 
to the outcome, the recommended or suggested pro- 
cedure must be modified and changed to suit the con- 
ditions where use is to be made of the same. Retrial 
and revaluation are necessary. Finally complete adap- 
tation and adjustment result. Our teacher has grown 
professionally. 

The further growth of the teacher in service should 
encourage and cultivate this reserved, open-minded 
attitude. Does it not become immediately apparent 
that the study of authorities operates against that state 
of mind? Hence continuation training of the teacher, 
surely a fitting name for the process, should cultivate 
an attitude of reserve, of readiness and willingness to 
test, to prove, and to accept only after worth has been 
proved by trial. It can not be repeated too often to 
teachers in service, the authority may know the sub- 
ject being taught or the topic being discussed, but the 



134 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

authority does not know the conditions of work nor 
the pupils being taught. 

Therefore a very important part of the work of the 
teacher in service is the adaptation of subject and 
method to her conditions and to her pupils. If this 
were not so we should long ago have had actual graph- 
ophones installed as teachers. Nor does it matter 
whether the recommendation emanates from an au- 
thority who speaks or from one who writes. Neither 
does it matter to the teacher whether the recommenda- 
tion to be tried has been scientifically or empirically 
derived. 

Suggestion and recommendation are the function 
of the authority; interpretation and adaptation are 
the teacher's part. Sympathetic, intelligent, contem- 
plative observation, and quick and artistic adjustment 
and readjustment of the plan or proposal recommend- 
ed, must be a distinctive feature of the power devel- 
oped for the teacher in service. The more clearly 
teachers themselves see and understand this difference, 
the greater will be the benefits from continuation train- 
ing of the teacher. 

Adaptation of plan is the feature urged. This is 
not the same as scientific work in experimental ped- 
agogy. Graduate schools of education claim that part 
of the field for themselves. Experimental work in 
pedagogy requires control of conditions. Most teach- 
ers can not control conditions, but must teach under 
conditions as they find them. Therefore the actual 
teacher, as a student practitioner, is a determiner of 
validity of method or of principle by the trial and fail- 
ure method. 



ADAPTATIONS AND READJUSTMENTS 135 

Does this rob continuation training of teachers of 
value? Are study of books, attendance of pedagogical 
lectures and courses, belittled and cheapened and made 
insignificant and worthless by such a statement? Sure- 
ly not if it be admitted that the teacher in service needs 
to be able to make adaptations and even must be kept 
capable of making adaptations and readjustments. 

I No fixed and limited stock or outfit of methods and 
principles, even if it include all of the best known 
methods and principles on the day of graduation, con- 
stitutes an adequate life stock, unless there be pro- 
vision for modification, substitution, and even for addi- 
tion. 

Stagnation has but one antidote. Growth alone 
resists decay. Mechanical continuance of the same old 
method brings loss of alertness and of sprightliness of 
mind. Liveliness of fancy and readiness of conception 
may be preserved by adoption and adaptation of new 
and of newer plans, recommendations, determinations. 
Only a very few teachers can be originators. Provi- 
dence has fixed that limitation. 

All teachers may be and most teachers should be 
conscious adopters and adapters in the sense here de- 
fined. The teacher in service, finding the recommenda- 
tion of a new device or procedure, often can not tell 
nor does it much matter, whether it be an empirically 
derived principle or a scientifically established pro- 
cedure. She treats each as if for her needs it must be 
tried and judged by the outcome of her trial. After 
each trial readaptation will be needed until she has the 
method or device shaped to suit her conditions. 

Thus from the training of teachers in service comes 
the unexpected justification for scientific experimenta- 



136 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

tion in methods and procedure. Thus also we realize 
that scientific experimentation must be followed by 
adaptation in the schoolroom. Teachers in service 
must be made skillful and capable adopters and adap- 
ters. Empiricism can give validity to scientifically 
determined method. Five or six per cent of investi- 
gators will give us scientifically determined methods 
under controlled conditions, and ninety-five per cent 
of practicing teachers will apply these methods to con- 
ditions as they are, and thus fix the worth and validity 
of the method for certain conditions. 

The reading of books on pedagogy, the discussion 
of the presentations of such books or of lectures or of 
articles, in teachers' meetings under the direction of 
good leaders, is the most economical form of such 
work. It surely helps teachers. It is therefore much 
used. Some teachers of every study group adopt and 
adapt the hints, suggestions, directions, and thereby 
increase their skill and judgment in adapting newer 
methods and better forms of procedure. 

However, the mere reading of such books on ped- 
agogy and afterward passing an examination upon 
them is far from the desired adoption and adaptation. 
In an examination the teacher who passed the best 
examination on the books could not report upon any 
new idea that the reading of the book had led her to 
try. Not only could she not use the method which she 
described satisfactorily, but she was not ready to de- 
cide whether or not the method would work in her 
school. 

One candidate out of a group of eighteen explained : 
"I studied the book because it was required for certifi- 
cate renewal. I nearly studied my eyes out. I did not 



ADOPTION AND ADAPTATION 137 

think we needed to try the suggestions unless we want- 
ed to do so/' An extreme case, surely, but just such 
cases are more frequent than requirers of "reading 
of two books on pedagogy" are willing to admit or 
would feel comfortable to know about. 

Now as ever, incorporation in practice is an entire- 
ly different matter from knowing in theory. Though 
long known, this fact is easily forgotten, and zeal in 
the acquisition of books on pedagogy is assumed to be 
the same as putting the theory into practice. Super- 
intendents charged with the training of teachers in 
service, quite frequently assume that the acquisition 
of the new idea is sure to result in its incorporation 
into subsequent practice. 

The examination is not the test of adoption and of 
adaptation. It might be made such a test. However, 
the practice following the reading of the book should 
show the extent and degree of modification of method 
which is induced by the reading. If the reading does 
not induce changes in practice, it has been almost use- 
less. As already stated, adoption and adaptation occur 
here and there, but to test the results of the reading 
very close supervision of the teacher is necessary. 

This may be self-supervision with the conscious 
effort to adapt, or it may be the work of the super- 
visor with the teacher under the feeling of obligation 
to assimilate and adapt the suggestions of the book to 
her work or to be able to give a very good reason for 
not doing so. It is not safe to put great earnestness 
and emphasis upon the reading of books in pedagogy 
in the expectation that as teachers learn what a book 
on pedagogy teaches they will be sure to fit fhe sugges- 
tions to their schools. 



138 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Does some one demand an example of the kind of 
study that does produce adaptation? Fortunately in- 
stances exist everywhere. The waking up which comes 
to a body of teachers who take part in a survey or in 
a standard test will perhaps serve as our example. 
Definite procedure, exact valuation of results, drawing 
of graphs for the particular teacher's group of pupils, 
comparing the graph of each individual pupil with that 
of the class, and thereafter giving to the respective 
groups of pupils the precise drills which the test shows 
they need, this is work that opens the teacher's mind, 
that gives her the attitude of inquiry, and that leads 
to very definite adaptation. 

Now if reports upon surveys or standard tests were 
to be found only in books on pedagogy, and if these 
books became the required books, teachers might very 
easily pass an examination upon the reading but would 
be entirely unable to apply the specific remedies to 
their pupils' shortcomings. Modification of the teach- 
ing would never result from the study of the prescribed 
book. Participation in a single standard test that was 
made to compare classes has transformed the teaching 
attitude and practice of numbers of teachers who had 
read numbers of books on pedagogy but who had made 
no important change in their methods for years. 

Every teacher and every superintendent needs to 
be reading and studying for the purpose of adoption 
and adaptation. In the preparatory period the student 
sees, hears, accepts ; in the teaching period the teacher 
should see or hear, modify, try; then modify and try 
again. The distinctive feature of the growth of the 
teacher in service is power and skill to modify new 



PREPARATORY STAGE 139 

suggestions and recommendations until they just fit 
her conditions. "That is not saying anything new," 
someone may remark. 

It may be what all think, but it is not what all do. 
Scan the requirements of state boards, state superin- 
tendents, city and county systems, and notice by how 
many an examination proficiency in books on pedagogy 
is accepted as identical with power and skill in the use 
of the ideas of the books. The attitude of the prac- 
ticing teacher must be as different from that of the 
student teacher as are the responsibilities and oppor- 
tunities of the two circumstances. The student teacher 
must be receptive, and can not be anything else. The 
practicing teacher should be questioningly receptive, 
open-mindedly docile, sincerely critical, carefully dis- 
criminative. 

In the preparatory stage the teacher has no trained 
sense of value of method, aijd accepts upon faith what 
is recommended. This is not the learner's fault nor 
the professor's sin. It is just the fact that we are all 
born ignorant and must achieve knowledge. We learn 
to judge finely of things by beginning to judge of them 
grossly and cultivating the power to judge more and 
more finely or discriminatingly. 

I The teacher in service has a chance to judge by 
I reason of her daily teaching experience. Training for 
her should be the contrast between what she had been 
doing and what is proposed in the new suggestion. This 
contrast should give rise to an independent judgment 
and should not stop with an acceptance of the new on 
faith. In classes for the training of teachers in service 
by reading of required books on pedagogy, the two at- 
titudes may be made very clear. If book absorption is 



140 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

accepted as satisfactory the examination question will 
be, "What is the author's opinion ?" or "What does the 
author say?" If adoption and adaptation are to be 
tested the question must be, "How did you modify the 
author's recommendation to suit your circumstances? 
What were the results?" 

Growth of the teacher in service is measured in 
terms of increase of power to find and to adapt new 
methods, devices, ideas. Now one entire purpose of 
supervision is to put the teacher into possession of the 
best known to supervisor and teacher so that the learn- 
ing process for the child may be made as short and as 
successful as possible. 

It is the duty of supervision to forestall the teacher 
from making and repeating errors of practice that 
waste time and energy for the child. The teacher 
should not be permitted to work out her skill by re- 
peating all the mistakes which have already been dem- 
onstrated to be mistakes. One mistake by the teacher 
becomes forty or fifty mistakes if each pupil makes the ^ 
mistake. This is too costly. Experience conducts a 
very good school, it has been said, but also a very slow 
school and a very costly school. 

The same point of view will reappear when rating 
of teachers is discussed, but there as here the power 
to adopt and to adapt suggestions and recommenda- 
tions is regarded as the highest and most desirable and 
most praiseworthy capability of the teacher, and this 
highest power the growth in service should surely de- 
velop. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Supervision of Instruction and the Grading of 
Teachers for Efficiency. 

It appears safe to say that a difference in the effec- 
tiveness of teachers is everyw^here found and every- 
w^here admitted. This difference in effectiveness is 
quite generally adopted as a basis for difference in rate 
of pay. The principle is as sound economically and 
ethically as the pay for piece work in a factory. 

The questions and disputes arise over the way of 
measuring and expressing the difference in effective- 
ness. Efficiency scales have been constructed on dif- 
ferences in the grade of teachers' certificate, according 
to which pay increases as the grade of certificate be- 
comes higher, on the supposition that the more ex- 
tensive the knowledge of the teacher the better the 
instruction. 

This form of expression of assumed difference is 
generally combined with increase of remuneration ac- 
cording to length of experience. The second year's 
teaching while holding a certain kind of certificate is 
paid more than the first year's, the third year's is paid 
more than the second year's up to a maximum of from 
five to ten years. This increase rests on the supposi- 
tion that each added year's experience increases the 
teacher's skill and power as an instructor to such a de- 
gree as to be worth increased pay. In school districts 
where frequent visits of teachers by supervisors or 
superintendent are possible, a third form of increase is 
usually made part of the grading plan. 

141 



142 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

A table of excellences or merits (sometimes also 
of demerits) of teaching is prepared. At each visit of 
a teacher by the superintendent or supervisor judg- 
ments or appraisals of the teacher on the items of the 
list of merits or demerits are recorded, and at the end 
of the year, the general average of these marks or ap- 
praisals decides to which class any particular teacher 
belongs. 

The latest and most positively helpful efficiency 
valuation systems all include each of the three differ- 
ences as factors of increased efficiency and therefore 
as reasons for increased salary. Because salary in- 
crease is expected by teachers in all systems of schools 
as the teachers become conscious of their increased 
worth as teachers, and because boards of directors 
everywhere are willing to pay the efficient teacher 
more, large school systems have very generally adopt- 
ed some scheme of regular and systematic increase of 
salary for teachers. 

Such schemes are called salary schedules. They 
are needed for the satisfaction and contentment of 
teachers and for the peace of mind of the directors 
and the superintendent. They permit of the concentra- 
tion of mind and energy of the teacher into good teach- 
ing work rather than into a study of ways and means 
to influence board and superintendent to grant a sal- 
ary increase. They permit the superintendent and the 
board to watch the teacher's work carefully and analyt- 
ically by the table of merits rather than to ponder 
ways and means to keep questions of salary increase 
out of conversations and discussions. 

A salary schedule administered by a board and 
superintendent in whom a corps of teachers has con- 



SALARY SCHEDULES 143 

fidence is conducive to a contentment and a concentra- 
tion of effort on the part of teachers which can not be 
attained in any other way. The reason for this peace- 
ful and contented condition is that in nearly every case 
the estimate of the teacher herself is so fair and accu- 
rate that she anticipates the rating of the superintend- 
ent and is gratified to find that her judgment is con- 
firmed by the superintendent's judgment. 'The criti- 
cisms given me during the visits of the superintendent 
and supervisors prepared me fully to expect what I 
have been given," is a frequent remark in groups of 
teachers rated according to a good system in the hands 
of careful and conscientious superintendent and super- 
visors. 

Differences Due to Difference of Teacher's Certifi- 
cate. The higher the grade of certificate the larger the 
attainments which it represents, the more it has cost 
in time, in labor and in self-denial. Combined, these 
increments of knowledge and experience constitute a 
larger capitalization of personality in the same person 
than that possessed at the level of the lower grade of 
certificate. This constitutes an ethical and economical 
ground for the expectation of increased pay. 

It may be necessary to insist here that the argu- 
ment holds only "for the same person." It is not nec- 
essarily true that A holding a permanent certificate 
is a more efficient teacher than B who holds only a 
temporary or provisional certificate. The argument 
means to assert this : Both A and B will be improved 
as teachers by more knowledge and experience, so that 
both will be better teachers if the training is carried 
to the higher levels. 



144 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Training can not and will not cancel differences of 
original native endowment. Every superintendent has 
seen teachers with little training vastly superior in 
effectiveness to certain other teachers who had grad- 
uated from several training schools. The teacher with 
poor training but with rich natural gifts is sure to be 
better than the teacher with poor natural endowments 
who goes through several schools. 

The demand for like pay for like certificate is there- 
fore unsound. Because of this truth a system of pay 
based on teachers' certificate alone may be very un- 
fair, and will almost certainly be unfair unless cor- 
rected by differences in effectiveness as judged by a 
table of merits. 

Differences Due to Length of Experience. So long 
as the teacher retains any plasticity and docility, so 
long continuing experience will add continuously to 
knowledge and skill. At first the increase is marked 
and rapid. Opinions differ, but some observers and 
estimators fix the limit of appreciable increase at five 
years. Other observers and students hold that ten 
years is the limit. 

The matter is important because it fixes the time 
or point at which the maximum salary may be expect- 
ed and should be paid. Salary schedules are not in 
agreement, but five or six years for grade teachers 
and six or seven years for high school teachers are 
frequent. The personal equation can not be entirely 
overlooked, but here too the grading by regard for 
excellences or merits permits a close approximation to 
justice to be attained. Rating as Class A, or Class B, 
or Class C, will be attained according to rate of devel- 
opment in the service, and will be slow or rapid accord- 



POWER OF INSTRUCTION 145 

ing as the teacher is rapid or slow to adopt and adapt 
suggestions of Supervisors and superintendent. 

Teachers themselves are most frequently impatient 
and disappointed at this point. They can not realize 
that having taught the same number of years is not in 
itself a guarantee of equivalence of power to instruct. 
"I have taught almost as many years as Miss G. is old, 
ar>d yet after four years of teaching she is rated higher 
than I am. Surely there is something wrong with a 
rating system which permits that to happen"; thus 
do some teachers think and talk. 

Usually the best reflection for a superintendent or 
supervisor under such circumstances is the thought 
that if the complaining teacher had the keenness of 
mind to appreciate the real reason for the difference, 
she would also have the keenness of mind to improve 
her teaching so as to rise into the higher group. 

Hence the modification of the qualifications em- 
bodied in kind of teachers' certificate and length of 
teaching experience by eflficiency as measured in some 
table or scale is necessary to reach approximately fair 
dealing with teachers. 

Now just what is meant by efficiency as a quality 
of the teacher? To say that efficiency requires ade- 
quate knowledge, skill as an instructor, and power as 
a disciplinarian, is not definite and accurate enough 
for a supervisory basis and rating scale. These large 
qualities and terms must be separated into still more 
definite and specific qualities. 

Then recognition of the qualities will be easy and 
certain for the judge, and when delivered to the teacher 
informs her which qualities are commended and which 
questioned or condemned. Even if rating and salary 
10 



146 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

increase were not dependent on this careful discrim- 
ination of definite qualities, the steady improvement 
of the teaching and of the teacher as the result of the 
supervisional criticism, demand it. Teaching must be 
not merely "good," but must be "good" because it pos- 
sesses definite qualities, such as asking good questions 
and eliciting good answers; it may not be condemned 
as merely "unsatisfactory" unless the critic points out 
the respect in which it is unsatisfactory, as lacking 
clearness, continuity, or coherence. 

Scales of Merit. Each rating system will have its 
own items. No two scales are ever exactly alike. Some 
time we may have a standard scale. Hence each com- 
mittee or superintendent will prepare a scale or table 
to satisfy local needs or individual estimates of valua- 
ble qualities. 

The Fourteenth Yearbook of the National Society 
for the Study of Education; Part II, Methods for 
Measuring Teachers' Efficiency, contains a table of 
such qualities prepared by Professor Arthur Clifton 
Boyce, at page 44, Chapter III, which is very complete 
and detailed. 

Under its first heading. Personal Equipment, it in- 
cludes fourteen items ; under its second heading. Social 
and Professional Equipment, it lists twelve items; 
under its third heading. School Management, it lists 
four items; under its fourth heading. Technique of 
Teaching, it lists ten items ; and under its fifth heading, 
it lists five items. The entire list aggregates forty-five 
items. 

The items are so named that critic and criticised 
will have common ideas as to their significance, even 
when there are differences between judge and judged 



DEGREES OF EXCELLENCE 147 

as to the quantity or degree of excellence in that qual- 
ity which the criticised teacher may possess or employ 
in her work. To any one preparing such a scale, the 
Boyce scale will be immeasurably helpful. 

Degrees of Value. The ascription of values to the 
qualities or items in the chosen list also raises impor- 
tant questions. Infinite complexity and complication 
can be embodied in a rating scheme at this very point. 
Boyce uses a scale of 10 divided thus : 

Excellent, 1 ; 

Good, 2 and 3; 

Medium, 4, 5, 6 and 7 ; 

Poor, 8 and 9 ; 

Very Poor, 10. 

In favor of many distinctions there is the consid- 
eration that it is sure to secure fairer treatment of the 
teacher if a supervisor's rating is reviewed and con- 
firmed by a superintendent. Where the supervisor or 
superintendent interprets his own marks the marks 
themselves are chiefly reminders, and the simpler sys- 
tem of five degrees or grades of any quality is sufficient 
for all ordinary purposes. If more detailed discrim- 
ination is to be useful, brief descriptive or explanatory 
notes made at the time of observation are the wise and 
helpful system. 

How determine the values 1 to 5 if that scale be 
used ? It may be done by calling 5, Excellent ; 4, Good 
or Satisfactory; 3, Fair or Passable (barely accept- 
able) ; 2, Unsatisfactory; 1, Failure. 

This series of terms is much used for this scale, and 
often is quite satisfactory to teacher and supervisor. 
Whenever the supervisor is aiming to make the super- 
vision most directly fruitful and productive, he will 



148 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

devise and use after explanation to his teachers, a set 
of distinctions like these; supervision reaches results 
through suggestions to teachers, hence need for sug- 
gestions and disposition to adopt and to adapt sugges- 
tions may very properly become the measuring unit of 
the scale. The scale might then represent these forms 
of value : 

5, seldom needs any suggestions from the super- 
visor ; often supplies suggestions to the supervisor ; 

4, needs suggestions but always uses and adapts 
them wisely; 

3, needs many suggestions, uses some, but seldom 
or never adapts them to her needs; 

2, is helpless alone and must have suggestions about 
everything; seldom or never gets any suggestion used. 

1, total failure; continuance impossible. 

Besides putting the good teacher on her mettle, 
this scale permits every teacher to feel that her in- 
dividuality has a real chance to demonstrate itself and 
to secure recognition. This removes one of the most 
strongly held objections to supervision, namely, that 
it tends to make mere imitators out of teachers. 

It is also unmistakably true, that teachers marked 
on this basis are surer to anticipate their marks and 
to feel that they have been fairly treated than if the 
mark be an estimate of excellence described by a word 
with no indication why that quality is assigned. No 
one is more keenly aware than the teacher herself as 
to just what has happened between her and the super- 
visor in the matter of giving and receiving sugges- 
tions; To get the 5 the teacher must make her work 
stand out as something entirely different and better 
than the supervisor's suggestions. Using suggestions 



TEACHER RATING 149 

from the supervisor ever so skilfully can not secure the 
desired 5. 

So long as all the originality comes from the super- 
visor, the teacher can fairly be called satisfactory, but 
nothing more, since it is the successful use of the su- 
pervisor's suggestions that enables her to reach 4; 
when the supervisor makes the suggestions it is be- 
cause at that time the v^ork is only 3, "needs many 
suggestions." 

With this scale fairly applied teachers find it pos- 
sible to evaluate their ow^n work and to arrive at the 
same judgments as the supervisor, certainly to concur 
with the supervisor's marks with little or no difference 
of opinion. 

Getting the Rating of a Teacher. Definite state- 
ment and demonstration of procedure will enable any 
one to construct a Rating Scale. Let it be assumed 
that the scale is to include four heads : 

I. Personal Qualities; 

II. Professional Spirit; 

III. Teaching Ability; 

IV. Disciplinary Ability. 

Each of these four heads may again be divided into five sub- 
heads, so as to make it possible to recognize, evaluate and credit 
excellences and defects very specifically. This sub-division 
might be made thus: 

I. Personal Qualities: 

I. Voice; 2. Punctuality; 3. Resourcefulness; 4. Alertness; 
5. Good Sense. 

II. Professional Spirit: 

1. Attitude toward pupils; 2. Attitude toward community; 
3. Interest in work; 4. Co-operation; 5. Preparation. 

III. Teaching Ability: 

1. Arouses interest; 2. Is logical and psychological; 3. 
Reaches all members of the class; 4. Tests preparation; 5. Com- 
mends effort. 



150 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

IV. Disciplinary Ability: 

1. Uses ethical ideals and motives; 2. Develops self-con- 
trol; 3. Uses instruction as means to discipline; 5. Keeps pupils 
busy with appropriately related seat work. 

As already stated, any desired number of points 
or divisions is possible. Each rater will prefer to make 
his own. This rater would advise relatively few points. 
The great advantage of such a scheme as here shown 
is that the points assume an equality of value, and all 
schemes for artificial weighting of points are unneces- 
sary. As yet the entire procedure is so crude that we 
may forego all discussion or quibbling as to whether 
each of the subdivisions is equally valuable. 

We may decide that question some day, but we shall 
then know much more than we know now about "scien- 
tific" rating of teachers. 

The four main heads, and the five subdivisions give 
us just twenty items for valuation. Since the maxi- 
mum mark on any point is 5, the total mark for a 5 
on each of the twenty items will aggregate just 100 
points. Since almost all of our records and markings 
are on the basis of a 100 scale, it will be of relative 
advantage to have the rating scale on that basis also. 
Confronted with the duty of rating a teacher, the su- 
pervisor consults his notes and observations, evaluates 
in terms of suggestions needed and used, and finds it 
relatively easy to ascribe a 5 for one item, a 4 for an- 
other, a 3 for some, and so on. When each item is thus 
marked, the aggregate may be 60 or 85 or 95. 

Classification of teachers into groups as A or B or 
C requires one more arbitrary step; the fixing of the 
credits or points which shall constitute the classes or 
groups. Class A might be fixed as those teachers who 
receive more than 90 points ; Class B those who receive 



PAY AND RATING 151 

between 80 and 89 ; Class C those who receive between 
65 and 79. This supplies suggestions and examples of 
all the distinctions and differentiations of the usual 
Pay and Rating Scales. 

Applied to a Salary Schedule the items combined 
would arrange themselves thus: 

Length of One Year Five Year Life 

Experience: Certificate Certificate Certificate 

Class C— 

One Year $800 $ 900 $1,000 

Two Years 880 980 1,080 

Three Years 960 1,060 1,160 

Etc. 

Class B: 

One Year $ 950 $1,050 $1,150 

Two Years 1,030 1,130 1,230 

Three Years 1,110 1,210 1,310 

Etc. 

Class A: 

One Year $1,100 $1,200 $1,300 

Two Years 1,180 1,280 1,380 

Three Years 1,260 1,360 1,460 

Etc. 

Note. — Illustration of method is all that the above table con- 
veys. The differentials are $100 per year difference between the 
kinds of certificates, $150 a year between the classes of teach- 
ers, and $80 per year increase for experience. Such values and 
differentials are in use in many places. Obviously information 
can be secured from any city using a Rating Scale by writing 
to the superintendent of schools. The rapid changes in teach- 
ers' salaries since 1917 makes any published scale worthless 
within the year in which it is fixed; hence this hypothetical scale 
is as useful as any for demonstration. It has no other purpose. 

Important Considerations About Teacher Rating. 
No scale yet studied by the writer covers several im- 
portant considerations by so much as a reference to 
them. First in importance is the necessity to put be- 
fore any teacher but a single mark on any one point. 



152 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Even if a superintendent and a principal both mark a 
teacher, and if each evaluates on identical points, not 
the different and separate marks of the two judges but 
a single compounded mark should go before the teach- 
er. 

The two or more judges should meet, confer, agree, 
and record the mark to which they can agree. That 
is the only mark that should go before the teacher 
and to that mark the two or three judges should then 
adhere in any discussion with the teacher. To do 
otherwise is to bring the entire scheme into disrepute. 
If the principal values the teacher's work 5 on any 
point and the superintendent rates it 4, and the teacher 
is given both statements, is not the arbitrariness of the 
marking the first impression, and will not the aware- 
ness that it is an arbitrary mark impair the teacher's 
respect and confidence for the marks and the system? 
Much dissatisfaction with marking systems is due to 
our "variable" judgments and values. 

We have not had a fixed standard like "Need and 
Use of Suggestions," and have tried to imagine the 
best teacher we ever knew on a point as the standard 
for 5 for that point. Not having had the same teacher 
in mind, of course, our standards have varied, and we 
have forced the knowledge of the variation upon the 
teachers. It is worth repeating and insisting that on 
each item in a rating scale, but one mark should be 
recorded and reported to the teacher. 

Second, it is far best if each judge or rater passes 
judgment only on such points or items as belong defi- 
nitely and specifically to that judge. The point can be 
easily made clear by reference to the items which a spe- 
cial supervisor evaluates. In the case of the supervisor 



RESPONSIBILITIES 153 

of writing, rating should be restricted to the work of 
the teacher as it affects the teaching of writing in that 
room ; similarly with other supervisors ; then there will 
be no overlapping or contradiction of judgments and 
authorities. 

Probably there will be no disposition to question 
this statement as to the special subjects like vocal 
music, drawing, writing, and physical training, except 
some one may ask, how is the principal's or the super- 
intendent's judgment to become effective in these spe- 
cialties where either has something good or bad to 
register? Entirely by conference with the supervisor 
and by modification of the supervisor's mark if neces- 
sary. 

How shall the field be divided between the super- 
intendent and the principal? Entirely in accordance 
with the responsibility of each for the supervision. 
The principal will have the major responsibility and 
weight in the matters which are mainly his responsi- 
bility, and the superintendent may suggest values or 
modifications. In matters like certification and so on, 
which are mainly the superintendent's responsibility, 
the principal will have only an advisory and a concur- 
rent weight. In practice this differentiation is not dif- 
ficult, although the first suggestion for its need is not 
easy to accept. Practice and tradition have so entirely 
set up another and a different procedure. 

If supervision is to lead to a teacher rating that 
shall win and hold the respect of teachers, however, 
it must eliminate some of the present crudities and 
contradictions, like our arbitrary values and variety of 
opinions. 



CHAPTER XV. 
Why Supervision of Instruction Is Necessary. 

The duties of every school superintendent are made 
up of work which is purely administrative and of work 
which is simple and true supervision of instruction. 
To order the year's supply of textbooks is an admin- 
istrative duty. To counsel with a group of teachers on 
methods and devices is simple and true supervision of 
instruction. 

Many school boards and some superintendents are 
quite hazy in their notions as to the proper work of 
the superintendent. Administrative duties keep the 
business of the board going, hence board members are 
prone to think that the administrative duties are most 
necessary. Some directors have even been heard to 
ask, "What would the superintendent do if he did not 
have administrative duties? We appoint well-trained, 
experienced teachers, surely they can teach without 
much direction from the superintendent." 

By reason of the title of this chapter, administra- 
tive duties must be omitted here. This will be a dis- 
tinct advantage. Most books dealing with the super- 
intendent treat only administrative, that is, executive 
duties, and give as little as a single short paragraph 
on the real work of supervision of instruction. That 
fact created the opening for this discussion of super- 
vision of instruction in a separate cover. 

A somewhat recent public discussion of the justi- 
fication for supervision was supposed to have estab- 
lished these two reasons for supervision of instruction. 

154 



DISSATISFACTION 155 

First, the board finds out what the teachers are doing. 
Second, the superintendent secures his information for 
rating the teachers according to the salary schedule. 
These two are neither the first nor the most compelling 
reasons for supervision of instruction. 

The fact that a prominent superintendent made the 
statement is corroboration of the statement already 
made, namely, that some superintendents are not very 
clear in their conceptions of the true function of super- 
vision of instruction. 

For instance, it is possible and probable that no 
other one cause is productive of so much dissatisfac- 
tion on the part of teachers as the "rating" by the 
superintendent. Of this discontent school boards hear 
much. To remove the cause of complaint many boards 
would gladly discontinue supervision for rating pur- 
poses, if they believed that its only advantage was the 
"rating" advantage. The fact of teacher's dissatisfac- 
tion with rating as a supervisory function can not be 
dismissed with the consoling thought which some 
boards and some superintendents profess to entertain, 
that the only reasons why teachers object to super- 
vision is that it makes them work harder, that it makes 
them study to keep abreast of the time. 

This is very unfair to teachers as a class, even if it 
is known to be true of one or more teachers. They do 
work hard and will work hard to get time for a little 
study if it becomes evident that the study enables them 
to do better schoolroom work. 

It is permissible to venture the guess that another 
reason for teachers' dissatisfaction with supervision 
is the fact that supervision of instruction fails to ac- 
complish its chief purpose in many places, that is, it 



156 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

fails to bring fresh life and new vigor to teachers and 
to the teaching. If most of a superintendent's time 
must be given to administrative duties, and least of 
his time to supervision of instruction, supervision of 
instruction will be very poorly done or will not be done 
at all. 

The superintendent should first of all be a super- 
visor of instruction. If this supervision requires all 
his time, the board should appoint an administrative 
assistant superintendent to take care of the business 
part of the work. The business will thus get all the 
time it needs from an official who is directly and solely 
responsible for the business, and the superintendent 
proper can then supervise as he should the real teach- 
ing work. 

Probably the first step toward such an office as su- 
perintendent of schools was prompted by the need for 
an official to whom a school board could delegate admin- 
istrative duties. Naturally the office grew as schools 
grew in size. Good business administrative ability is 
the best hold many a superintendent has on his board 
of directors. 

The superintendent does the business well and ex- 
peditiously, gets the reputation of being a good execu- 
tive officer and for that reason has the confidence of 
the board. For executive duties this is both right and 
proper. In his spare time such an administrator is 
also likely to do very good supervisory work in guid- 
ing and directing his school system toward definite 
ends and by unified and coordinated procedures. 

As far as it goes that is good supervision of in- 
struction, but it is a bare premonition of the entire 
duty of supervision of instruction. "There will be little 



EQUIVALENCE OF INSTRUCTION 157 

need of supervision if you appoint none but thorough- 
ly trained teachers," has been urged in many places as 
a reason against the cost of supervision. 

No fact is more certainly known to all good super- 
visors than the fact that without supervision, the 
twenty best teachers that you could put into a school 
building would not develop a school in which the work 
was unified and harmonized. "Would not these good 
teachers confer and thus work out a single plan ?" some 
one asks. Of course they would, but that conference 
is supervision of instruction. The losses resulting from 
changes of textbooks which were formerly so much 
deplored was not any greater than are the losses to 
children through lack of supervision. 

It is a frequent occurrence in large city schools that 
children in the same grade of one school building, a 
boy in one teacher's room and a girl in another teach- 
er's room, find themselves in the home doing work by 
entirely different plans. In one such case the girl 
worked all her interest problems by the exact method, 
and the boy by the 60-day six percent method. Both 
children were sure they were right, and the poor father 
who was himself a professor of mathematics had a 
hard evening's work reconciling the children's dispute. 

Nothing but supervision can secure unity, use of 
the same textbook does not secure it, use of the same 
course of study can not assure it. Supervision which 
directs what shall be taught, and follows up the direc- 
tion to see that it is carried out is the only way to se- 
cure unity, harmony, continuity, and equivalence of 
instruction in an entire system. 

Just what is the school to do for the child and for 
all the children of the school system? If we just re- 



158 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

state these outcomes of schooling it will help to make 
clear why we must have supervision of instruction. 
The child attends school so that he may become intelli- 
gent, so that his inborn powers may be developed, so 
that he may be trained and fitted to live with people 
and to take part in that common or community life. 

Supervision picks the way of travel (course of 
study), sets the pace (promotion rates and stages), 
and keeps the process diligently in operation to pro- 
duce motion or progress forward (true supervision, 
oversight, and guidance) . Information should be clear, 
definite, and usable, and needs to be kept new and re- 
cent, and should grow into power and desire of con- 
stant acquisition and correction. 

Development of the pupil must be studied to enable 
supervisor and teacher to adapt and to proportion the 
instruction to the children. The learning of new things 
of the schoolroom must become the habit of constant 
readjustment of knowledge and ideas, so that the con- 
stant changes of the world about him shall not puzzle 
and mystify the child after he leaves school. A chang- 
ing world calls for constant readjustment to fit into 
and to harmonize with the changes. 

Every live and wide-awake man and woman em- 
bodies this principle just as much as did Gladstone and 
Bismarck. Teaching under modern specialized grades 
and subjects could not accomplish such a result at all 
if it were not for the inborn capacities and powers of 
human nature. 

Supervision of instruction must find and must keep 
in sight the unifying and harmonizing principle which 
the individual teacher and the specialist would very 
seldom find and perhaps never follow if left entirely 



QUALITY OF INSTRUCTION 159 

to the inclinations of their own preferences. This 
charges the supervisor with no mean task. 

What must supervision secure in "quality" of in- 
struction? It must see that the ends stated shall be 
clearly perceived and closely followed by the teachers. 
Visits to schoolrooms and conferences with teachers 
must be planned to see that the implicit of the course 
of study becomes the explicit of the recitation. All the 
teachers shall know the desired ends and shall con- 
sciously do their part toward carrying the pupils in 
their classes the outlined distance and degree forward 
toward the end fixed. 

The more schools there are in the system, the more 
difficult is it for the supervisor to attain these ends. 
If the future welfare of child and community are con- 
sidered, it is much more important that these ends of 
instruction be secured than it is important that the 
business affairs of the system be economically admin- 
istered. Economy in the business aifects the present. 

The education and training of the child not merely 
affects, but entirely limits, fixes, and conditions that 
future for himself and modifies it for all who come 
into life contact with him. Which is not saying that 
carelessness and extravagance are to be permitted, but 
it is saying that right supervision of instruction is 
more important than good business administration. 
The supervision of instruction is much the more im- 
portant, although some directors will not admit it, 
since they can and do hear the complaints of taxpay- 
ers, and they may never hear the complaints and la- 
ments of the children who are now attending their 
poorly supervised schools, complaints and laments that 



160 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

their school opportunities did not teach and train for 
certain things which life requires of the adult. 
f "As is the teacher so is the school" is still true. For 
' supervision the maxim may be stated, "As is the su- 
pervision so is the teacher" and then the older form 
of the statement will also be true; therefore, as is the 
supervision, so is the school. 

Supervision must first secure unity of aim and pur- 
pose in the instruction. Although it is not easy of ac- 
complishment, it is imperatively necessary, else each 
teacher will have an individually varied aim and pur- 
pose. The course of study, bulletins, outlines, confer- 
ences with teachers, and grade meetings of teachers 
are the means for this unification process. 

New teachers coming into a system are probably 
alone a sufl[icient cause to require supervision or the 
results of supervision in securing unity and coordina- 
tion in the teaching work of the respective grades in 
the different schools of a system. Continuity and re-| 
latedness of instruction must also be secured by super-* 
vision. Frequently the change of a textbook in a 
lower grade may require a change of plan and method 
in the grades following the grades which are using the 
new book. Without careful supervision such an ad- 
justment would be overlooked. 

The teachers coming into a system, or the teachers 
changing from one grade to another within the sys- 
tem, need supervision to observe and to obey all the 
details of procedure set down in the manual or in the 
official bulletins. 

Adaptation of the instruction to the age, under- 
standing, and to the developmental interests of the 
child must also be secured by supervision. There are 



INSTRUCTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES 161 

teachers in every system, of course, who look after 
these matters carefully without supervision. Here also 
the constant changes in the corps of teachers makes 
heavy calls upon the supervisor's time and energy. 

Let it be admitted that teachers can do this with- 
out supervision, but let it also be truthfully stated that 
many of them never give the matter a thought unless 
brought up short and sharp against some point involv- 
ing the adaptation, although their proceeding evidences 
unmistakably that the idea of adaptation was not pres- 
ent when the lesson plans were made and is not present 
during the recitation. 

The instructional opportunities of all the children 
in a school system should theoretically be equal. Theo- 
retical approximation to equality may be secured by 
good supervision, but would never even be thought of 
if each teacher were permitted to run her school as 
seems best to her. 

The teacher with 30 pupils of one grade finds it 
easy to have each class recite in every major branch at 
least once each day. What can the teacher do who has 
two or three or four grades in one room? Each pupil 
in her room is also entitled to one recitation each day 
in each major subject, but where can the teacher find 
the time for it? 

This difficulty has escaped the discernment of many 
good teachers. They have done the best they could 
under the circumstances and felt that their sins would 
be forgiven them. The best grade teachers aim to 
equalize the time between the grades. That is a recog- 
nition of the problem, and is an attempt to solve it. 
But even that is a very different thing from equalizing 
the children's chances. 
11 



162 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

The instruction must also be suited to the subjects 
of instruction. A written arithmetic lesson which calls 
only for figuring exercises may be literally a "written" 
arithmetic lesson, but it is far from being the kind of 
instruction which the child needs in the subject. 

The oral explanation of the figuring process is a 
most important place for language training, training 
in the power to think as you talk, and also a process 
by which the solution becomes a clear unified concep- 
tion of the process as a whole rather than as a partial 
or piecemeal conception step by step. Such regard for 
suitability of method and of subject can be fostered by 
supervision. 

In the absence of supervision many schools have 
entirely abandoned explanations or solutions in arith- 
metic. In any system of schools it is likely that here 
and there a teacher is using each study as an exercise 
for training in several other branches also, but if such 
wise use of opportunity is to be general in a system, 
it must be made general by supervisory requirement. 
Otherwise individual teachers will "do as they believe 
best," with regard only for their own preferences and 
wishes, and with entirely complacent disregard of 
equalized instructional opportunities of all the children 
of the system. 

No printed book or bulletin can secure this observ- 
ance of the accepted best procedure. Supervision, 
closely observant and insistently following up its direc- 
tions with follow-up oversight can secure the equal 
rights of all the children as against the preferences 
or individual likes of some teachers. 

Supervision must secure economy of time in learn- 
ing, economy of effort, economy of cost of equipment. 



DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE 163 

If each teacher be permitted to follow her own ideas, 
unimaginable varieties and disparities of proceeding 
will result. Of the varieties and disparities, but one 
can be best. This best supervision must prevail 
throughout the entire system, until some excellent 
teacher works out a new "best." 

Then again supervision will disseminate the knowl- 
edge, reequip all the teachers of the system Avith the 
better, newer plan, and thus once more justify super- 
vision. New ideas, plans, and methods can and do 
spread a little among the teachers of a corps without 
supervision, but the right kind of supervision will im- 
mediately and quickly spread to all the teachers of the 
system anything and everything new and better that 
can be secured. The attainment of this end of super- 
vision, it should be positively stated, is not possible 
except the supervisor has time for much visiting of 
teachers and for many general teachers' meetings and 
for grade conferences. 

Working at a desk in an office, or traveling about' 
among the schools to see that window panes are all in 
place, and that book closets are in order, will not secure 
economy of time in learning. The most elaborate sys- 
tem of reports imaginable will not attain this end. 
Only direct personal presence in the schoolroom while 
the teacher is instructing, with the visit long enough 
to observe a unit of procedure, can give the supervisor 
a glimpse of the extent to which the teacher is giving 
heed to directions and requests for specific methods 
and procedures. 

Invigoration and inspiration of pupils and teachers 
with hope and ambition is also a duty of supervision. 
The teacher's daily admonitions and appeals to pupils 



164 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

for their best efforts can be powerfully reenforced by 
the superintendent. A word, a nod, a question, a com- 
mendation, cost nothing and take no time, but the su- 
perintendent must be there at just the right moment, 
and that moment is never when he is sitting in his of- 
fice. Teachers and pupils are helped to a steadier and 
more confident effort. 

Instruction must also be kept reasonably new and 
complete. The textbook may be unavoidably out of 
date. In 1921, for instance, no textbook in geography 
can possibly show the boundary lines of central Euro- 
pean countries. The magazines show the lines as they 
are tentatively fixed from time to time. Supervision 
most get this infonmation which is not in the books 
before the children if it be gotten there at all, so that 
the entire plan and method of presentation shall not 
be destroyed. If each teacher fits the matter into the 
scheme of things in her own way, there will be as many 
ways as teachers. Only supervision can make the ad- 
dition of the new or the modification of the old so as 
to preserve the unity and balance of the original sys- 
tem. 

To visit teachers often, at least often enough to 
see them do the several different kinds of work as- 
signed them, and after such visits to confer with them, 
is the only way in which a superintendent can direct 
the work of a system so that the instructional qualities 
will be what they should be. 

No superintendent will seriously disagree with the 
ends of supervision as here enumerated and described, 
but how many superintendents are there who request 
from their boards of directors sufficient time for this 
kind of supervision? No school system in which a 



PROPER RECOGNITION 165 

teacher can report but one visit of her supervisory of- 
ficer during a school year has anything that may fairly 
be called supervision of instruction. No school system 
has real supervision if the superintendent pays even 
hundreds of humming bird visits. Real supervision 
confers much with teachers, always after visits, often 
before visits. Garfield told us, "Statesmanship con- 
sists of removing causes rather than evading results." 
Superintendents may profitably practice the wisdom 
contained in that dictum. 

The mention of the conference of superintendent 
and teacher brings into prominence for us what is 
probably the most conclusive proof that supervision 
of instruction has not attained proper recognition in 
the work of superintendence. We have not yet found 
the right way, not even a good way of meeting this 
need for conferences. 

To hold teacher and superintendent after school is 
not fair to either. To defer the conference until Sat- 
urday is to miss the vital point of the conference, name- 
ly, its applicability. A correction that can wait until 
Saturday is likely to be regarded as if it might about 
as well have been withheld altogether. The right prac- 
tice will require school time, and school time of both 
teacher and supervisor. 

How shall the teacher's class be cared for? Obvi- 
ously by a substitute teacher. Where is there a school 
system which has substitute teachers for this purpose ? 
Obviously, therefore, superintendence has not insisted 
upon the provision of a satisfactory means of confer- 
ence without loss to the children or without imposition 
on teachers and supervisors. 



166 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

What superintendent is not aware that to take 
school time for such conferences would immediately 
bring the criticism, "They do that just to take it easy. 
They are loafing on the job." When real supervision 
of instruction shall be recognized as it should be, not 
only will time for conferences be allowed in the sched- 
ule, and substitute teachers provided, but our school 
buildings will be provided with suitable rooms for such 
conferences. 

Summarized the obligations of supervision of in- 
struction may be arranged in this way: Instruction 
must possess unity and completeness, it must possess 
proper sequence, it must be suited to the children and 
to the branch of study, it must give all the children 
the same chance, and it must incorporate the new with 
the old as fast as the new is also approved. 

All these qualities of instruction summed up will 
enable the pupil to assimilate what he needs in the 
least possible time, at the least outlay of energy and 
of money by the community. Retardation of school 
children, as Ayres demonstrated some years ago, is 
costing school districts tens of thousands of dollars 
each year. 

I This is a preventable waste. Supervision of the 
fright kind can prevent it if combined with teaching 
of the right kind. The best obtainable teaching with- 
out supervision can not eliminate that waste. Super- 
vision of instruction must therefore assume the re- 
sponsibility to equip each new generation of children 
with the ideas and ideals of the parents in the least 
possible time, and must also prepare them to be ready 
and capable of readjustment to the changes that will 
come after school days are over. 



GUIDE AND INSPIRATION 167 

Only a very small percentage of teachers as teach- 
ers have ever caught that vision. From its very na- 
ture, teaching of children operates to contract and to 
shorten the teacher's vision. The child, figuratively 
speaking, is with the teacher only a day or two; how 
shall the teacher become aware that her teaching must 
be for life and not only for the ever imminent "pro- 
motion" examination? It is the duty and the oppor- 
tunity of supervision to get the larger and the longer 
view integrated in school ideals and in school pro- 
cedures. 

Administrative and executive proficiency will never 
reach this goal. Supervision of instruction and con- 
ferences concerning the instruction will make the su- 
pervisor the guide and the inspiration of the teacher 
even as the teacher is the guide and the inspiration of 
the pupil. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

How May the Visit of the Supervisor Be Made 
Profitable and Most Enjoyable? 

The times of school visits, perhaps it should be 
written "of school visitation," by the supervisor of 
instruction, is in many school systems and by some 
teachers in all school systems, a day or time of extra 
tension and strain. "The supervisor may not be pleased 
or may find something to criticize," thinks the teacher, 
and therefore dreads the supervisor's coming or the 
interview after the visit. 

Many teachers, on the other hand, feel that the 
days of visit by the supervisor are among the best of 
the week or month. They look forward pleasantly and 
eagerly to the visit. If they chance to see the super- 
visor they are sure to inquire, "Are you coming to my 
room soon again?" They look forward to the visits 
with expectations of delight and profit. Will they not 
be given help and advice about matters that have puz- 
zled them? Will they not receive commendation for 
new features in their methods? Will not the super- 
visor clear up certain cloudy problems? Will not the 
supervisor have suggestions and recommendations for 
the management of hard cases of discipline? Will not 
the supervisor bring new ideas, new hope, fresh cour- 
age for the daily round of difficulties? How may the 
supervisor's visits be made an unfailing satisfaction 
and pleasure for every teacher? 

All teachers who regard the supervisor's visits a 
pleasure and a source of strength could easily write 

168 



SUGGESTIONS TO BEGINNERS 169 

a prescription to fulfill the conditions, and all the pre- 
scriptions would have common suggestions. 

Among the suggestions given by a group of experi- 
enced teachers to a group of beginning teachers, the 
following common suggestions were found. Other sug- 
gestions are possible, and a few of the recipes had none 
of these suggestions. Therefore, no claim of exclusive- 
ness can be made for the suggestions here presented. 
To claim that would be folly. Instead, the suggestions 
are passed along in the hope that since they have al- 
ready helped some young and beginning teachers, they 
now find a larger usefulness, and entirely in the spirit 
of freely and gladly giving to others what has been 
found useful and helpful to some. 

The teacher ought to be glad when the supervisor 
comes. Ought is used advisedly and intentionally. 
The school system is under obligation to the present 
generation to fit the new and oncoming generation 
most directly and most economically for its duties and 
responsibilities in the sphere of adult manhood and 
womanhood. Hence instruction must get to its goal 
at the least expenditure of time and money. 

In school systems where a large percentage of the 
teachers is "inexperienced" each year, and where an- 
other large percentage is also "untrained" each year, 
the only reasonable means of securing the necessary 
economy and directness is through the provision of 
careful supervision of the instruction. The supervisor 
is a fixed fact for some coming generations ; the school 
inspector can come only when the untrained and in- 
experienced teacher disappears. Since we must have 
supervision (guidance) of instruction, therefore, it 
becomes a duty of teachers to be glad for it, and the 



170 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

"ought" should be that of a firm and unfaltering re- 
solve, stayed by the expectation and belief that super- 
vision will lead to better work in instruction. 

A steady, fixed, and positive determination to get 
good out of the supervisor's visits, to learn from them 
and to profit by them, is a first necessity to the actual 
and positive enjoyment of them. "I will overcome my 
foolish fear and nervousness and just be myself" must 
be resolved and the resolution lived up to. It may 
waver, rise and fall and disappear when the super- 
visor is actually in the room, but it will also rearise 
and stand out if the teacher is getting ready "all the 
time" instead of just about the time when the super- 
visor is expected to come. 

For instance, the teacher who propounds a teach- 
ing perplexity to a supervisor, and who receives an 
appropriate suggestion from the supervisor, will not 
easily think nor believe that the supervisor's visits 
are to be dreaded rather than enjoyed. 

Besides this moral and ethical "set" of mind to en- 
joy the supervisor's visit, the teacher should be sure 
to follow the following suggestions. First, in a note 
book kept for the purpose be sure to record difficulties 
as they arise in the instruction. Any hints that her 
own knowledge or experience suggest should also be 
noted. 

During the supervisor's visit, bring out the note- 
book and refer the difficulties to him with a request 
for advice and help. Your careful note taking and your 
serious effort to help yourself, will impress upon him 
that you are both careful, studious and seriously in 
earnest. That impression is worth very much to the 
teacher. 



SELF-CULTURE AND TRAINING 171 

Also, after you have noted the difficulties and your 
best thought at the time, review your notes, and you 
will find your own mind dwelling upon the matter and 
drawing upon your experience, your observation, and 
your reading for a further or for a completer reply. 
This reaction upon your own thinking is worth more 
than the supervisor's visit, even if he does give a dif- 
ferent suggestion. The teacher is developing strength 
and is laying up resources of helpfulness. Each of 
these is an excellent form of teacher self-culture and 
self-training. 

Second, after the supervisor makes suggestions in 
response to your request for help, adopt and adapt the 
suggestions to your school, classes and circumstances. 
To dismiss the suggestions without trial shows the 
teacher to be a mere flatterer, and not a student in 
search of better ways of teaching. That is what the 
supervisor will unavoidably think if the recommenda- 
tions asked for and given in good faith are not ob- j 
served in the teacher's subsequent practice. 

As m'fere policy, obsequiousness it will perhaps be 
thought, it is wise to show respect for his recommenda- 
tions. The young teacher working under the guidance j 
of a wise supervisor will nearly always find that the 1 
practice thus begun for mere policy will quickly estab-J 
lish itself firmly as a clearly grasped and intelligently 
applied principle. 

The supervisor's larger knowledge and longer pro- ] 
fessional vision will stand justified and confirmed by j 
the outcome. The teacher who was but a short dis- 
tance from scofiing will be converted into a believer 
in the wisdom and worth of the supervisor's recom- 
mendation. The mechanical and unsympathetic super- 



172 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

visor will be merely the exception which proves the 
rule. 

Third, tell the supervisor about difficulties which 
you think you have mastered for yourself and invite 
his judgment on your solution. This is not vainglory. 
This is the teacher's right and privilege. Since he 
can not see all of any teacher's work, and since the 
teacher is laying bare some of her weaknesses by her 
work or by her requests for help, therefore the teacher 
not only has the moral right but should feel under the 
necessity to tell some of her successes, entirely as a 
way of securing a fair and just judgment of her work, 
and as an offset to the admitted faults or weaknesses. 

The careful record of such instances, the modest 
and simple statement of facts, will stamp the teacher 
as careful, methodical, studious and desirous to im- 
prove in her work. To be thus regarded by a super- 
visor is to be held in not only high but in fine esteem. 

Follow your regular program or plan of work when 
the supervisor comes. If he wishes to see any special 
class or branch taught, request will be made. Be it 
*^ever so artfully done, suggestion of a change from 
regular work impresses the supervisor with the teach- 
er's unwillingness, perhaps unreadiness to go on with 
the regular program. If unreadiness, then unpre- 
paredness, and that is a cardinal sin. 

No form of flattery of him as a fine speech-maker 
is ever subtle enough to deceive the experienced super- 
visor. He was once a teacher under supervision. That 
little subterfuge is quite transparent to him. The 
teacher who believes and who acts as if she believed 
that the class will get more if she teaches it than if 
he taught it, is taking a fine professional attitude. The 



DAILY DIFFICULTIES 173 

teacher who is sure that the children will be greatly 
profited by the supervisor's speech is not fooling him 
even if she is flattering him. The teacher who omits 
the regular grammar lesson and who calls out her 
Third Reader class instead, is not fooling herself nor 
the supervisor nor the children. 

If such dodging must be resorted to when he comes, 
of course, the teacher will be under a tension and 
strain. If careful plans are made for the daily work, 
for recitation and for seat, and if the plans are faith- 
fully followed out, the teacher has forestalled all fault- 
finding. Instead of faultfinding, the careful planning 
and the faithful carrying out of the plan will evoke 
and will be sure to receive praise and commendation, 
and will thus start kindly thoughts and pleasant ex- 
pectations from his visit. 

The teacher who thus thoughtfully notes her diffi- 
culties daily just as they occur and refers them to the 
supervisor, who adapts his suggestions to her needs, 
who reports her own successes as well as her failures, 
who plans her work and works her plan, determined to 
teach every lesson as if it were to be taught under the 
observation of the supervisor, will be sure to enjoy 
her work most when the supervisor comes to render 
an opinion; she will be sure of approval of the excel- 
lences of her work. 

From that experience she will be able to judge more 
correctly and confidently on days when he is not pres- 
ent. That surely will result in a substantial increase 
in joy in her work. Thus diffidence, fear, discomfort, 
or even dread of the supervisor's visit, by determined 
and conscientious effort may be turned into enjoyment 
and pleasure and into the largest professional gain. 



CHAPTER XVIL 
Who Shall Rate the Superintendent? 

The rating or ranking of teachers for efficiency, 
as it is called, or the assignment of grades or values 
for results of their teaching, has brought out various 
and diverse opinions. Of all the questions raised, the 
caption of this chapter has been least discussed. This 
has given many teachers and all the opponents of rat- 
ing schemes or systems the impression that there is 
no satisfactory reply to the question. 

Usually the question is thought and not asked, al- 
though there can be no good reason why teachers 
should not ask such a question. Certainly there are 
some very good reasons why it should be answered if 
any large number of teachers suppose that no good 
answer can be given, and if they suppose that to ask 
the question is at once to bring rating plans into rid- 
icule. 

Superintendents are as much "rated" and more 
"berated" than teachers. Although teacher rating by 
superintendents and supervisors is a professional pro- 
cedure based on the "rater's" long experience, special 
preparation, and sincere and honest desire to do right 
and to deal fairly, the "rating" of the superintendent 
is done by everybody, often with malice, mostly in ig- 
norance, and without any special knowledge or experi- 
ence in the matters judged. Not all superintendents 
and supervisors are perfect, none are infallible. Some 
may be and are influenced by considerations which are 

174 



RATING SUPERINTENDENTS 175 

not professional, but entirely personal. This must be 
admitted, but the admission will not deprive rating 
schemes and processes of all claim to support for their 
continuance. 

Pupils rate the superintendent. They think his ex- 
aminations are too difficult, his rules are too strict, 
his requirements are too exacting, when the rating is 
low. He may be an amiable person all of whose deeds 
are entirely pleasing to the children. 

Between these extremes are all shades of modified 
opinion, more or less colored by repetitions of opinions 
gathered from elders at home or on the street, or some- 
times even nearer the seat of authority. Every super- 
intendent knows that for him there is no immunity 
from some kind of opinion held by the pupils of the 
system. 

Parents rate the superintendent; they praise or 
blame, sometimes one and sometimes the other, ac- 
cording to current opinion, settled habit or temporary 
community excitement. In about ninety-nine percent 
of the cases these opinions are based on half knowl- 
edge or on less than half knowledge. The equal rights 
theory of democracy is perverted into a supposition of 
equal knowledge and equal competency, and judgments 
are rendered on the work of supervisor and supervision 
with entire disregard for limited knowledge and lack 
of skill to judge that kind of values. 

Every superintendent knows he is being thus rated, 
and accepts the fact as part of his official responsibil- 
ity. Does not every day's experience on the streets of 
his city confront him with persons who have a griev- 
ance against the schools? Does he not many times 
have to explain and justify the acts of teachers who 



176 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

protest against his rating of their work by asking the 
question, "But who shall rate the superintendent?" 
Does he not know that he is being rated just as 
certainly as are the teachers, and does he not also know 
that usually there is no "long preparation, long ex- 
perience, sincere desire to do right and to deal fairly" ? 
Just as with teachers, rate of pay and continuance in 
office depend on such rating for the superintendent. 

; The newspapers rate the superintendent also. Gen- 
erally this is intelligent and sympathetic rating. Often 
it too is based on incomplete acquaintance with the 
facts. This rating is public, spread before all the 
people, all the children, over an entire county. The 
teacher never is subjected to a rating such as news- 
paper discussion of the work of the superintendent 
constitutes. 'This too is a part of the inevitable re- 
sponsibility of the office, and every superintendent 
knows he must expect it. The recollection of this fact 
should help teachers to realize that their own rating 
and grading, which never becomes public, is as noth- 
ing compared with the superintendent's rating. 

The teachers rate the superintendent. Not always, 
of course, from the broad and professional basis that 
should be expected. Sometimes they rate him from a 
purely personal point of view, sometimes from the 
particular school or grade point of view. A true view 
and judgment of the superintendent by the teacher 
should take into consideration the entire aim and pol- 
icy, the complete program for the entire system. Get- 
ting this larger point of view and the endeavor to com- 
pass and to assimilate it for the purpose of cooperation 
and participation, this will forestall littleness and nar- 
rowness. A teacher who does this will have individual 



TEACHER AND SUPERINTENDENT 177 

opinions about matters, but her sympathies are almost 
certain to be friendly. 

While not all superintendents judge their teachers 
on clearly professional considerations, it is certain 
that more superintendents are right in this matter 
than are teachers; or to say the thing differently, the 
percentage of superintendents who form professional 
estimates of their teachers is larger than the percent- 
age of teachers who form a professional estimate of 
the superintendent. 

Training, experience, outlook, all combine to make 
this true. The fact that it is true, however, has an 
important bearing in this discussion ; the teachers' rat- 
ing of superintendents is not entitled to the same con- 
sideration that could and would be accorded it if the 
judgment were entirely broad, impersonal and de- 
tached. The two judgments are not reciprocal, there- 
fore can not cancel each other. 

The board of directors rate the superintendent; 
usually this rating is quite unreserved, frank, and en- 
tirely undisguised by any diplomatic effort. Position, 
pay, peace of mind, esteem of the community, and other 
values depend upon it. It is a part of the responsi- 
bility, and is so accepted by the superintendent. Any 
and every phase of the many varieties of duties im- 
posed by the office is subject to rating by the board. 

Nothing in a teacher rating scheme can in any way 
compare with the board's rating of the superintendent. 
This fact is urged so that teachers may see and com- 
prehend how much pleasanter is their lot when rated 
by superintendent and supervisor than is the super- 
intendent's when rated by the board. 

12 V 



178 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

"Who shall rate the superintendent?" is admitted- 
ly a fair question. He is rated by pupils, by parents, 
by the community, by the newspapers, by the teachers, 
by the board of directors, by state officials. The su- 
perintendent too has not one but many persons who 
rate his work. Knowledge of his work in many cases 
is very incomplete and one-sided, disposition is biased, 
judgment is given about matters of which the judge 
has no knowledge of values. Teachers rated by super- 
intendent', by principal, and by supervisor, surely can 
not think they have made rating of teachers ridiculous 
by asking satirically, "But who shall rate the superin- 
tendent?" They can not avoid the conclusion that 
theirs is the lighter burden. So it should be, of course. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Few Unsolved Problems of Supervision of 
Instruction. 

It might be inferred from the title of this chapter 
that the preceding chapters were regarded as solutions 
of the problems there discussed. The most that is 
claimed for those chapters is that they do constitute 
an attempt at an answer, though they do not assume 
that it is the only answer nor that it is the best answer. 
Wrought out of experience and wrought into print, 
they represent just what one supervisor has found 
workable. Many plans and expedients tried are not 
recorded in these pages, merely that others may be 
given the benefit of honest effort to find the better way. 
These unsolved problems are so regarded by many su- 
perintendents and it is the knowledge of that fact that 
warrants their statement and description here. 

As already stated, one chief obligation of super- 
vision is to keep instruction fresh ; that is, vital. Rou- 
tine procedure year after year, sing song teaching as 
it might be called, should not be tolerated by good su- 
pervision. To keep the instruction fresh, that is, up 
to the hour as to facts and relations, requires that the 
facts and the relations be gotten before the teachers 
in advance of the new textbooks. The educational 
journals all discuss and present these matters in val- 
uable and timely articles. If the teachers subscribe 
'for these journals and read them, the facts and rela- 
tions will at least be known to the teachers. But chat 
is a very different matter from getting these matters 

179 



180 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

taught. The teachers already know the textbook. 
They have taught it or another like it. With this in- 
ertia in favor of the book the superintendent must 
reckon, for it is one of the constituents of the difficulty 
of getting the new facts before the pupils. If the 
teacher is to get the facts from the magazines, how 
are they to be gotten before the pupils? Is the school 
to subscribe for the magazines, and make study and 
recitation from these magazines a part of the work 
of the classes? Some superintendents have been able 
to induce their boards of directors to subscribe for 
school magazines for this purpose, but this reply is not 
general. 

Syllabi complementary to the course of study are 
another form of provision for the introduction and in- 
clusion of anything new in facts or methods of pro- 
cedure. The mimeograph and other forms of cheap 
and rapid duplication of copies have made this form 
available for small and for large systems. But the 
study and adaptations of these syllabi are an enor- 
mous tax on teachers. If each supervisor and if the 
general system all get out syllabi or teaching outlines, 
when is the teacher to become familiar with the syl- 
labi ? When is she to work out the necessary accommo- 
dations of outline to books? Usually supervisors pre- 
sent such a syllabus and try to console the teacher by 
saying, "You can easily do it in a few minutes." Prob- 
ably the few minutes v/ill mean an hour or more. There 
may be four or five supervisors, and there is the gen- 
eral supervision by principal or superintendent. If 
each of these agencies use a syllabus, think of the 
teacher then! When is she to find time to make the 



TIME FOR CONFERENCES 181 

needed accommodations of syllabus to textbook in from 
six to ten subjects? 

Can this work be done at the grade teachers' meet- 
ings? Well, some superintendents think so and are 
making a hard trial to succeed by using teachers' meet- 
ings. The teachers' meeting will very likely be part 
of the plan which shall finally be adopted, but as a 
sole reliance the teachers' meeting is insufficient. Time 
is not available to hold teachers' meetings frequently 
enough. One teachers' meeting a month is usually re- 
garded as about all the time the superintendent should 
spend with his entire corps in teachers' meetings. 
When the teachers' meeting is to be held, that is wheth- 
er in school hours or after school hours or on Satur- 
day, is itself an unsolved problem. 

In general this problem is made more difficult be- 
cause every school system takes new teachers on each 
year. While these new teachers are becoming familiar 
with the course of study they are also to become famil- 
iar with the syllabi. Where is the time to come from 
and where are teachers to find the strength for such 
exertions? Shall they be paid extra for these extra 
labors and for this extra time? 

Time for Conferences. To attain the ends of super- 
vision conferences between teachers and supervisors 
are necessary. There should be conferences before the 
superintendent or supervisor observes work, confer- 
ences afterward, conferences during vacations, con- 
ferences during any local crisis. The "when" alone is 
one aspect of the problem. Next, whose time is to be 
used for the conference? Shall it be school time or 
Saturday or other after-school time? Some supervis- 
ors practice a modification or combination of all these. 



182 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

The payment of teachers while attending institutes 
foreshadows a possible reply: Fixed days for grade 
meetings and conferences with pay for the teachers 
and supervisors for this time. The meetings and con- 
ferences are held that the child may save time in learn- 
ing, hence the community can afford to pay for it. This 
consideration has not been insistently forced into 
prominence by superintendents in urging the claim for 
extra pay for the time put into extra effort by teachers, 
supervisors and superintendents. Hesitation to urge 
this claim may be due to the fact that it used to be 
thought that the teacher was trained and ready to do 
her work before she began to teach. If teachers' meet- 
ings were held it must be for the benefit of the teach- 
ers, it was to enable them to make up for the lack of 
preparatory training. We are now justified in de- 
manding the remuneration for the extra meetings be- 
cause they will shorten the learning time and process 
for the child, thus save his time, and therefore save 
the communities' time and expense. 

Another aspect of this problem is whether or not 
the conference of teacher and supervisor should take 
place immediately after the supervisor's visit, in school 
time or after school time? How could it be in school 
time ? The teacher has a class which must not lose the 
time. An answer which has nowhere been tried is an 
extra teacher who accompanies the supervisor, and 
who takes charge of a room while the supervisor and 
teacher are conferring after the supervisory visit, or 
before it, too, if the supervisor desires to confer with 
the teacher before seeing her teach a particular sub- 
ject. This teacher could be used as a substitute when 
the supervisor is not visiting teachers. The confer- 



FREQUENCE OF VISITS 183 

ences of teachers and supervisor would surely occur, 
and the fruits of supervision would be certainly gath- 
ered. If the real value of supervision of instruction 
were generally perceived and appreciated, this extra 
teacher would have been asked for and secured. Su- 
pervisors trust the chance conference after school or 
on Saturdays. From the chance conference very little 
good can result, hence the true value of the supervisory 
conference has been almost overlooked or unrealized. 

Frequence of Supervisory Visits. What is the 
most beneficial frequency of visits of special teachers 
or of supervisors of special subjects? Once a week, 
once every two weeks, once a month? Is the same 
frequency needed by all the subjects or should some 
subjects be more frequently supervised than others? 
How often should the superintendent visit his teach- 
ers ? Is once a month enough ? Is that too much ? Fre- 
quence of visits of supervisors and superintendents 
has^ been fixed wholly by regard for the time units of 
the school week or school month, so that the special 
teacher never comes oftener than once a week, per- 
haps not more frequently than once a month. Why? 
Is it entirely a matter of economy of either time or of 
money for payment of salary? Or is it reduced to 
minimal frequence because teachers are said not to 
like supervision in almost converse ratio to their need 
of it? What is the answer? Who will determine the 
matter? Will we not some day recognize the fact of 
units of subjects or unit portions of processes? And 
will the unit of the subjects and of the processes of 
instruction determine the frequence of supervisory 
visits? Whether that fact will condition frequence of 
visits or not, it is clear that we have nothing but opin- 



184 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

ions on the matter and the opinions are almost as nu- 
merous as the school systems. Each system is at work 
on its own opinion of the matter. 

Should the superintendent see a teacher once a 
month, once a year, or how often? Should he see a 
teacher in part of her work, that is, should he see a 
few classes taught or should he have time to see the 
teacher teach each subject in her program? Should 
he see her at a diiferent time of the day at each visit? 
It would be impossible for superintendents to try to 
hold themselves to such a modification of their itin- 
erary of visits, say some superintendents. Which is 
but saying that prevailing practice is assumed to be 
doing pretty well, and that pretty well were better 
left alone. To change the proceeding because of the 
recognition of a principle rather than follow the chance 
method of the present, might get us less satisfactory 
results. Interpreted that statement says, "We are not 
very sure what are the values of supervision. We as- 
sume that there are some valuable results from super- 
vision, and we might lose those if we change the prac- 
tice." Supervision is not sure enough in its convic- 
tions of its own value to demand the necessary time 
and freedom for the supervisor to visit teachers on 
that basis of frequency. Has supervision made any 
demands for such an amount of free time for the su- 
pervisor? Will it be ungracious to suggest that per- 
haps some supervisors are not very sure that more 
visits by them would result in gain to the teachers and 
the schools? Irritating supervision, of which numer- 
ous forms exist, may very properly be reduced to a 
minimum, or would that it could be reduced to zero. 



FREEDOM FROM VISITS 185 

How much freedom from disturbance do schools 
need? 

This is not the same question as the former. Su- 
pervisory visits may properly be regarded a disturb- 
ance, since the presence of the supervisor is a differ- 
ent circumstance. Frequent disturbances hinder and 
annoy. Every system of schools that has become fa- 
mous like Gary, Indiana, finds it must fix certain times, 
say days or even weeks, in which no disturbance of 
teacher and children is permitted. "Visiting priv- 
ilege withdrawn for the day" needed to be posted so 
often that each teacher has a card which she fastens 
on her door and thus turns the stream of disturbing 
visitors away. Of course the necessity is easily per- 
ceived and denial of the privilege is not resented by 
the visitor, especially if he be a "school person," even 
if he has journeyed some hundreds of miles to see the 
school. Unit of work plays a part in this freedom from 
visit, but freedom from overstimulation must also be 
taken into consideration as an end to be kept in mind. 
What amount of freedom from visiting does a school 
need? is therefore a problem which should be solved, 
probably as the complement of the problem of the right 
frequence of visits. 

Results of Standard Tests. How can supervision 
make sure that each teacher uses the results of all tests 
or of standard tests so as to secure the maximum bene- 
fit? Statistics and summaries and comparisons of 
school systems are worth while, and the work of stand- 
ard tests may very properly make such study of these 
comparisons prominent. After the classroom teacher 
has found how the home system compares with neigh- 
boring systems, and even after she has found the stand- 



186 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

ing of her class with other classes of the home system, 
there is a result incomparably more valuable than 
either of these facts, namely, just where each of her 
individual pupils succeeded and where each failed in 
the test. From that knowledge should come a series 
of corrective lessons or drills for the pupil or group of 
pupils who have made the same blunder. To discover 
the blunders, then to group the children according to 
the kind of blunder, then to devise a way to give to 
each group just the kind of drill which it needs, all in 
class time, and without breaking up her class or her 
schedule, is a difficult problem for the teacher. Super- 
vision must solve the problem, but first it must realize 
the importance of this aspect of standard tests. This 
application of the revelations of the test is the fine 
color and the mellow taste of the ripened apple. 

Written or Oral Report of Observations of Super- 
visors. Shall each supervisor inform the teacher of 
the result of his observations? Shall the report be 
written or oral or both ? At first thought this question 
may seem to lack point. Consider that any teacher 
may have from one to six special teachers or super- 
visors, and one or more superintendents or assistant 
superintendents. If all these supervisory officials visit 
the teacher, shall each leave a written copy of the notes 
taken during the visit? That will give the teacher a 
fine collection of notes, but does it not appear to be 
rather much note receiving? Are teachers to be sup- 
plied with card index cabinets to keep their supervis- 
ory notes? Is not the oral report sufficient, especially 
if the conference about the visit takes place soon after 
the visit? It might seem so until it is recalled that at 
a subsequent visit both teacher and supervisor may not 



WRITTEN OR ORAL REPORT 187 

be able to recall just what was said or observed during 
the preceding visit? In practice it has been found that 
the persons who visit infrequently, say like a super- 
intendent, who makes but two or three visits a term 
to the teacher, the written statement of observations 
is much the more valuable. Quite frequently too the 
written statement can be so made and suggestions in- 
cluded that the conference after the visit is not actually 
necessary even if highly desirable. With the principal, 
for instance, who can and does visit his teacher very 
frequently, the oral report is preferable, except in very 
serious cases. Even with a principal, who can see his 
teachers any day and even several times a day when 
necessary, the writing of a second observation of the 
same fault and of its suggested correction, may be 
made very impressive just because it is written, if the 
teacher's attention is called to it with the remark that 
this written form of supervisory correction is used so 
that the number of times it was observed and corrected 
shall be recorded. Trust to memory in such cases is 
productive of dispute and disagreement. The practice 
of many years seems to establish this distinction as 
practicable and satisfactory. 

Each supervisor will have his own unsolved prob- 
lems, and will also have some form of solution of his 
problems. The art of supervision is quite young and 
the function is not yet sufficiently differentiated to 
have yielded any large body of accepted facts or to 
have developed any long series of settled procedures, 
and that explains why we have all these unsolved prob- 
lems. Just because of these unsolved problems the 
meetings of supervisors at educational conferences usu- 
ally are among the most interesting features of such a 



188 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

convention. Supervisors are mostly working alone on 
their problems, and each finds some kind of solution. 
Just how each supervisor can be given the benefit of 
the experience of all the others reveals the next prob- 
lem of supervision. 

How may the valuable knowledge and skill of all 
the teachers of a corps be made available for the entire 
corps, and especially how may the young teachers en- 
tering a corps be given the benefit of the skill and 
power of the experienced teachers ? When supervision 
finds the answer to that question, the work of the nor- 
mal school will be very much more valuable. One su- 
perintendent has tried cadet training of inexperienced 
teachers with such expert older teachers. The cost of 
the plan soon raised objections which could not be over- 
come, and therefore the benefit of the plan was not 
given a chance to become manifest. The faith of super- 
visors in such a plan must become much stronger than 
it now is if the experiment is to be given a fair trial. 
It must become so strong that it will insist upon that 
form of teacher training as the "continuation school" 
form. The normal schools can not possibly find places 
and classes enough for the students to get any real 
training in the normal model school. Every large 
school system can in this way train its own teachers, 
at some cost to the system, but with great gain to the 
children. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

What Two Teachers Think of Supervision. 

Long after all that has preceded had been thought 
out, and long even after most of it had been written 
and published, the two protests which constitute this 
chapter came to the writer's knowledge. They are in- 
cluded because they represent facts and a real point 
of view. Probably the preceding discussions have stat- 
ed or intimated the correction for the faults of super- 
vision set forth. It is not controversy that is aimed 
at but a contrasted point of view. The conscientious 
supervisor will want to feel that he has a proper cor- 
rection for every complaint voiced by the two teachers. 

How general is the feeling expressed by the two 
voices of protest is a problem. Some time soon a de- 
partment of graduate study of education will make a 
study of supervision of instruction in the supervisory 
units lying all about it in cities, boroughs and counties 
to ascertain what is the attitude of entire bodies of 
teachers toward supervision. Not all the sentiment is 
hostile or questioning. What percent is friendly is 
merely a guess. Hostile feeling usually treats itself to 
unrestrained utterance and so gives the impression of 
a host though but few voices are vociferating. The 
many teachers who feel benefited and who like super- 
vision say nothing. The few who feel wronged speak 
ceaselessly about it. The impression resulting from 
such a state of affairs is consequently false. Recently, 
out of ten teachers in a school system under super- 
vision, but one was opposed to supervision when ques- 

189 



190 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

tioned by an applicant about to enter the system, but 
that one said more mean and poisonous things than all 
the nine together said in favor of the scheme. Here 
too fault-finding was on the personal basis. 

The first article is from the March 20, 1919, issue 
of the Journal of Education. The paper was read 
at the Chicago meeting of the Department of Superin- 
tendence of the National Education Association. The 
reading of the paper made a very deep impression on 
the 3,500 superintendents present to hear it. No su- 
perintendent can pass it over hastily or lightly. It 
calls attention to supervisory procedures that are faul- 
ty or vicious. 



EFFECTS OF SUPERVISION AND CONSTRUCTIVE 
SUGGESTIONS THEREON. 

By Sallie Hill, 

As though anticipating this opportunity for us, the grade 
teachers of the United States, to present our views on super- 
vision, the grade teachers of St. Paul devoted the December 
issue of their Bulletin to what they termed "The gentle art of 
supervising." I quote from the editorial: "We, the grade teach- 
ers of this broad land, who are the mute recipients of so much 
wisdom and advice from those above us, find now and then ris- 
ing in our American trained hearts a desire to advise our ad- 
visors." 

Because this desire is about to be gratified, another feeling 
arises in our American-trained hearts, a feeling of satisfaction 
that this courtesy is extended to us the advisors unsolicited by 
the advised. 

What I am to say is, therefore, the consensus of opinions 
gathered from elementary teachers in many sections of the coun- 
try and their unanimity would indicate that supervision is not 
what it is intended to be. That some of you feel the same is 
shown by this discussion, so I hope our views will not be branded 



CRITICISMS OF SUPERVISION 191 

as the views of prejudiced teachers, but accepted as the result 
of experiences of persons trained for their work and upon whom 
through their long years of service, has fallen the heavy burden 
of over-supervision. This paper has no value if applied only to 
the teachers. It is the effect of unwise supervision on the pupil 
that justifies the time and topic assigned me. The child is the 
school — what is not good for the child is not good for the teach- 
er. Theories which fail in the practice should be abandoned. 

As we all know, the largest number of children complete 
their school life with the elementary grades. The public owes 
these children, who represent the great mass of our future citi- 
zens, the best elementary education which can be devised in 
order that the results may be worthy of our labor and desire. 

To secure these best results it is necessary that the elemen- 
tary teacher should work under conditions which conduce to 
cheerfulness, hopefulness and initiation [initiative] on her part. 
Such conditions do not now^ obtain, and for this our present sys- 
tem of supervision is largely responsible. 

From the long list of criticisms of supervision of special sub- 
jects I have chosen only those mentioned in the majority of the 
reports. 

First: Lack of democracy in our public school systems. We 
have no share in shaping school policy. We do not feel we have 
a real part in either the system or in educational organizations. 
In the former we perform the duties assigned us, and in the 
latter we pay our dues, and they are the sole duties of teachers. 
We are not making any effort to run either one, neither do we 
like always to be run. 

Second: Democracy cannot exist with the pi'esent system 
which gives so much power to those who supervise. We have 
been trained to think; you encourage us to do extension work 
and attend summer schools. We have been your pupils, some- 
times your fellow students, we have learned your methods, 
imbibed your theories on democracy in the schools, have learned 
to direct children in planning and executing projects, and when 
we take up our work, what do we find? We find a condition in 
which we are to use no initiative, are not able to put into prac- 
tice anything we have learned. Instead of training children to 
carry out projects, we are ourselves only the mediums through 
which others work. 



192 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

Third: Too many supervisors are lacking in training, per- 
sonality and teaching experience. When shall we learn that a 
department certificate does not fit a man or woman without ex- 
perience to be a supervisor; or a six to ten weeks' summer 
course fit an experienced teacher to be one? One class needs 
schoolroom experience and the other class needs more training 
in criticism and supervision. The lack of these qualities is the 
cause of constant irritation to the experienced teachers. It is 
humiliating and tends to neither cheerfulness nor hopefulness 
to have to submit to the criticisms of those whose lack of train- 
ing and experience has not fitted them for their positions. These 
limitations are so frequent as to disqualify a large number of 
those now doing supervisory work. No training and teaching 
experience are needed to see back of the form and into the spirit 
of a recitation. There should be less study of the teacher's plan 
and a closer study of the effect of the teaching upon the class. 

Fourth : Frequently psychological laws are utterly disre- 
garded in a supervisor's methods of criticism. Teachers are 
taught that the worst possible method in dealing with children 
is to leave them discouraged, yet there are many times when a 
teacher is left without courage or self-confidence. For a teacher 
to be left in such a state is a crime against teacher and pupil. 
Unwise, unfeeling criticism from supervisors has contributed 
more to the hysterical, broken down condition of the teaching 
body than any other one cause. 

Fifth: Supervisors too often discuss unfavorably the work 
of the pupils before the class, which is a reflection upon the 
teacher. 

Sixth: There are supervisors who mark the pupils' work, 
keeping up a running fire of criticism to the teacher all the 
while. The pupils during this time are given work to keep 
them quiet. Imagine the result and after effects of such criti- 
cism upon teacher and class. These are the ones who have no 
time to listen to a recitation or to give a lesson. 

Seventh: The supervisor's mental and physiological condi- 
tion plays too large a part in the rating and reports made to 
superintendents. Favoritism is another disagreeable factor met 
with oftener than perhaps you realize. 

Eighth: Too much is demanded by the system of the teach- 
er. Each teacher is expected to be a specialist in all subjects 



SUPERVISOR'S RATING POWER 193 

supervised and her rating depends upon the degree in which her 
class work measures up to the standard set by the supervisors, 
each of whom has to prepare only one subject, generally in an 
office during the time the teacher is teaching. Think what a 
super-woman a teacher must be to compete with specialists in 
from one to five subjects and finish all work in these and the 
other branches in the specified time. Is it any wonder that 
school work is condemned on the ground that boys and girls 
know so little about any one subject? 

Last and most vicious of all is the rating power of super- 
visors. Here let me say that I do not want to give the impres- 
sion that we are sensitive. No person who has remained a 
teacher for ten years can be sensitive. She is either dead or 
gone into some other business. But teachers are afraid. They 
must hold their positions or think they must, and they follow 
the course that seems most helpful; that is, they give all the 
time they can, and then some more, in preparation of super- 
vised studies; for upon the principal's report, plus the super- 
intendent's report, plus the school board's, plus the parent's 
opinion, plus the pupil's approval, plus the supervisor's rating 
do their salaries depend; but the feeling, whether right or 
wrong, is firmly established that the supervisor's rating makes 
or mars the teacher's future. Many schools give no credits for 
these special studies. The pupils receive marks, but these marks 
in no way affect their promotion. The pupils soon learn this. 
Yet, note this well, the teacher's tenure depends partly at least 
upon the rating given her on the class work done in the super- 
vised branches. Is this fair? Pupils know the marks count 
them nothing, yet the teacher wins or loses by their work. 

In fact our system is tottering because of too many of every- 
thing. Too many supervisors with big salaries and undue rat- 
ing power. Too many pupils in one room. Too many studies 
for one child. Do you ever permit yourselves to forget the 
recitations one teacher in the elementary grades is expected to 
hear — I cannot say teach — in one day? For fear you can't 
recall them let me remind you of the subjects, both supervised 
and unsupervised, in which she must be proficient and show 
enthusiastic interest: Arithmetic, geography, history, civics, oral 
and written language and what technical grammar she dares 
13 



194 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

introduce, spelling, phonics, reading, memory work, literature, 
nature study, use of dictionary, courtesy, how and where to find 
current topics, gymnastics, drawing, music, and sewing, with an 
occasional competitive composition thrown in for good measure. 
Could you do it? Neither can we. 

I have mentioned the defects of supervision as most com- 
monly stated and respectfully submit the following suggestions : 
Do away with supervisors in the elementary schools, as they 
have been dropped from the senior high school, and largely 
from the junior high school, with most beneficial results. If 
this plan is good in the upper grades, it will be even better in 
the elementary, for there is where the variety of studies pre- 
vails. Let the heretofore supervised studies be given to teach- 
ers who have proved themselves especially adapted and therefore 
especially successful in that work. Let one teacher have two 
of these subjects in one building, or one subject in two buildings 
just as manual training and cooking are now taught. Do not 
require the regular teacher to be in the room during the recita- 
tion, but give the responsibility of discipline and teaching to 
the special teacher. This will unify the work in that subject 
in the building, which is even better than unifying the work of 
the system. With a course of study provided, these teachers of 
special work need no supervisors any more than the teachers of 
the essentials, or what used to be the essentials, need them. 

Or if this suggestion is too radical and you think we must 
have supervision in the large city systems, then limit the duties 
of supervision to giving assistance to the teacher and unifying 
the work of the system, giving these studies, we still insist, to 
the few who can do them well. It is stealing children's time to 
have them do special work under any one but specialists. Hap- 
piness is the heritage of the childhood and we cannot make 
children happy unless we are happy ourselves. 

A word as to principals: We ask that they be chosen for 
experience and training rather than for a degree; that prin- 
cipals be asked to serve one year at least on probation to prove 
their fitness. 

I am glad that I have had an opportunity to say these 
things for my own class of teachers, and if only one superin- 
tendent here goes home with a little better understanding of our 



TEACHER'S VIEWPOINT 195 

cause, something has been gained for us. I believe that the 
time has come to speak freely of these matters to those who 
have power to change conditions which are so burdensome to 
us. To you who deal with the big problems, these criticisms 
may seem petty, but "going over the top" is sometimes easier 
than bearing the daily annoyances of trench life. I thank your 
president for giving me the opportunity to speak the truth 
frankly, for when you shall see the truth, the truth shall make 
you free. 

The second paper was read at the Pennsylvania 
State Educational Association meeting at Philadelphia 
on December 30, 1919, by Miss Carrie E. Koons, of 
Allentown. This too is a dignified and serious pro- 
test against some pernicious practices called by a noble 
name. No serious student of supervision as an aspect 
of educational development and activity can pass this 
paper over without admitting the objectionable fea- 
tures and thinking his own attitude into coherence and 
unity : 

SUPERVISION OF TEACHING: VIEWPOINT OF THE 
TEACHER. 

It is with a feeling of hesitancy that I venture to address 
this body of supermen and superwomen; for before me appear 
those men and women who have been thus portrayed: "Super- 
visors are usually chosen because of marked natural aptitudes 
in the way of leadership and executive ability; because they 
possess technical and expert knowledge of educational processes, 
and are capable of employing that knowledge for the develop- 
ment and advancement of the institution coming under their 
control." The word "usually" implies, however, that there were 
some reservations in the mind of the writer. 

For many years supervisors occupied a strongly intrenched 
position. No one sought to question their authority, or to di- 
minish their powers. While systems, superintendents and 
teachers, received their full measure of adverse criticism, super- 
visors exercised their "gentle art" of supervision undisturbed 
and undismayed. It was not until within recent years, largely 



196 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

through surveys made of educational systems, that supervision 
was "weighed in the balance and found wanting." 

Emboldened by their conclusions, the voice of criticism has 
grown louder and more insistent, coming from all sources — the 
lecture platform, the educational magazines, educational confer- 
ences; and even some more venturesome of the "submerged" 
grade teachers have begun to voice some of their dissatisfac- 
tion with those who have so long presided over their professional 
destinies. These are truly the days of vanishing thrones and 
of revolutions. So it is not altogether surprising that super- 
visors are not only encouraging, but even inviting those who 
have been their most subservient followers — the lowly grade 
teachers — to give expression to their views on the subject of 
"The Supervision of Teaching." 

That is the excuse for this paper. Although it places teach- 
ers in the rather delicate and embarrassing position of criticis- 
ing their superiors. Having accepted the challenge, let us nerve 
ourselves to the task. 

A state superintendent of education, in a lecture recently 
delivered before a body of teachers, gave as one of the great 
"wastes" in education, "the growing hostility between super- 
intendents, supervisors, and teachers." I would also call your 
attention to the following resolution passed by a group of pub- 
lic school teachers: "This Union is opposed to the admission 
of those having disciplinary or rating power over teachers to 
the same local (Union) with teachers." 

While we may regret such action as still "widening the gulf" 
between supervisors and teachers, still we cannot help but be- 
lieve that no group of teachers would take such drastic action 
without having some strong ground for complaint, and without 
a feeling that they had real grievances for which they could not 
secure redress by the usual channels. What are some of the 
specific causes which produce this discontent? 

One of the leading reasons is that supervisors apparently 
lack a "time sense." They seem to agree with the statement 
that teachers have the shortest day, the shortest week, the 
shortest year, of any profession, and promptly proceed to de- 
vise means and methods for making up the deficiency. Does 
the supervisor forget the annual pilgrimages to summer schools, 
and the time given to extension work during the tei;m? Does 



WORKING OVERTIME 197 

he forget the many hours of arduous labor that are required 
to carry out only one of the numerous educational projects that 
he demands? Does he forget the hours that must be spent in 
research, in the reading of educational journals, and the latest 
books on educational subjects? Does he forget the many hours 
devoted to the preparation of lesson plans, and the time spent 
in supervisory conferences on each and every subject in the 
curriculum? 

This does not take into account the endless amount of clerical 
work, and numerous other details, which often serve to lengthen 
out the one day into the "wee sma' " hours of the next. Each 
supervisor is equally exacting. He forgets that other super- 
visors have an equal right to make demands on the time and 
energies of the teacher. We hear much of the dearth of teach- 
ers. Inaugurate a longer day, a longer week, a longer year, 
as is now contemplated, and still fewer men and women will be 
willing to enter the profession, in spite of a promised substantial 
increase in salaries. If the present amount of work outside of 
school hours is to be continued, it will take a "miracle man," 
a "miracle woman," to endure the strain. 

Teachers are frequently called to meetings by their supjer- 
visors. This should be the supervisors' classroom project, and 
it would be only reasonable to suppose that it has received the 
same careful planning and organization as is required of the 
teacher in her classroom practice. Here she should be stimu- 
lated to increase her efficiency, but instead, the meeting often 
appears to have no other aim than to serve as a clearing house 
for the fault-finding of the supervisor, and to offer a convenient 
method for the passing out of a few more outlines for still more 
work. Is it any wonder that teachers go "unwillingly to school"? 
They leave the meeting disheartened, discouraged, and with 
little or no inspiration for their work in future. 

Perhaps a new course of study is in the making. Here 
would seem to be at last a splendid opportunity to give recog- 
nition to those within the teaching staff who have shown marked 
ability, initiative, and superior executive qualities. The teach- 
ers represent approximately ninety percent of those who are 
to put the plan into operation. Their experience is worth more 
than anything that can be copied from some other source, often 
by the "scissors and paste" method, or framed in some comfort- 



198 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

able office, largely by theory. Yet how rarely are supervisors 
willing to receive suggestions, or through discussion and inter- 
change of experiences to arrive at a common conclusion. 

Having so long bowed to the yoke of supervision, and being 
BO accustomed to follow dictated methods and courses of study, 
the teacher meekly accepts the new schedule without comment. 
"Her's not to reason why, her's but to do or die." Can we blame 
the teacher for her apparent lack of initiative and enthusiasm? 
Teachers are required to be thoroughly familiar with the "edu- 
cative process," and to be guided by its principles in their class- 
room procedure. Is it asking too much that the supervisor be 
equally familiar with these principles, and that he employ them 
in the classroom demonstrations, which he gives for the benefit 
of the teacher in charge? Supervisors often seem to forget that 
they were chosen for their high position from among a large 
number of equally skillful teachers. 

The practice of placing a little fluttering piece of paper on 
the teacher's desk, or the writing of letters from the office after 
a teacher's work has been observed is often regarded by the 
teacher as signifying the inability of the supervisor to cope 
with the situation. Of course, the teacher can offer no ex- 
planations or excuses, although they may be quite legitimate. 
Why not consult with the teacher and show her concretely in 
the classroom what educational principles she has violated, and 
how she can make her instruction more effective? The most 
expert teachers know that the perfect recitation is yet to be 
heard. They are very sensitive to its defects, and will gladly 
welcome constructive criticism. A source of irritation is that 
some supervisors make no comment whatever. The teacher 
does not know whether her work is meeting with approval or 
disapproval. She can only hope the "no news is good news." 

It is the rating power of the supervisor that is, however, the 
"head and front of the offense," and has led teachers to ask 
to be relieved of supervision entirely. It has been claimed that 
rating is neither just nor fair, and often made after a few hur- 
ried visits to the classroom, and that it is largely dominated by 
personal idiosyncrasies of the supervisor. Some consideration 
must be given to this contention. 



INDIVIDUAL HELP 199 

Investigations have shown that there are wide variations 
in the judgments of different supervisors when rating the same 
teachers. In one case 45 percent of the teachers were found 
"meritorious," while another supervisor considered only 16 per- 
cent of the same group "meritorious." More instances of the 
same kind might be given. This appears to show that the rat- 
ings of the supervisors are not as reliable as a guide as had 
been supposed. Examinations and personal opinion have also 
played their part, yet we are told that "the unreliability of the 
one is only exceeded by the uncertainty of the other." Yet on 
these same premises teachers have been demoted, salaries de- 
creased, and even dismissals made. But this is only one side 
of the question of supervision. Teachers do not wish to be 
accused of taking a narrow, prejudiced view, or of being led 
by their personal feelings. 

"To develop the professional resources and the personal 
powers of the teacher through professional stimulation, per- 
sonal encouragement, and technical guidance have been as- 
sumed to be the chief aims of supervision." That supervision 
has not always reached this high ideal is often caused by the 
same conditions of which teachers complain. There are too 
many teachers to supervise, too many clerical and administra- 
tive duties to perform, to pei'mit the supervisor to give the 
individual constructive help that teachers need. The more 
thoughtful teachers, those who have taught both with and with- 
out supervision, those who are most vitally interested in their 
professional improvement, recognize that they have need of ad- 
vice and guidance. They do not wish for less supervision, but 
more — of the efficient type. They know that much of the ad- 
vance that has been made in the past educational practice is 
due to competent supervision. This is the chief reason for their 
(teachers) being. 

To the supervisor the superintendent delegates much of the 
responsibility for putting his plans and policies into successful 
operation. Coming intimately into direct relationship with the 
different phases of school work, the supervisor sees the needs 
of the schools, and can formulate them in his recommendations 
to school authorities. Each year teachers enter the profession 
without any previous or adequate preparation. The supervisor 
has demonstrated that he is equal to the task of "training- these 



200 COMMON-SENSE SUPERVISION 

teachers in service." By means of standardized tests, he gauges 
the efficiency of both teachers and pupils and sets up higher 
standards of accomplishments. He is constantly alert to all the 
latest movements in the educational field. He interprets them 
for the benefit of his teachers and assists them in introducing 
the more worthy into classroom procedure. He shows teachers 
how the fundamental principles of education may be applied to 
the solution of their difficulties, and how through these same 
agencies greater success may be attained. By determining the 
character of the programs of study, he sees that uniformity of 
aim, method and materials exist, and that better correlation 
between subjects of the curriculum is brought about. That in 
some case supervision has become too arbitrary and autocratic 
is proved by current opinion. The energies of teachers should 
not, however, be spent in opposing and defying powers, but in 
remedying defects. 

That teachers should be given more of a voice in the manage- 
ment of school affairs is being recognized. Organized groups 
of teachers are being requested to meet with boards of educa- 
tion, and to present their views of educational plans and pol- 
icies. It has been proposed that supervisors themselves be su- 
pervised. This is being carried into effect by special super- 
visors whose aim is to make an impersonal, objective measure- 
ment of the result and worth of the school, and on the basis of 
this appraisal to propose new standards, and methods. 

A committee making a survey of a school system has de- 
clared that, "What is needed is an organization that provides 
for the fullest consideration of educational policies by super- 
intendents, supervisors, principals, and grade teachers, where 
every major problem may be discussed with the fullest harmony 
and with the most complete information as to its bearing upon 
the interests of pupils, teachers, and of the community." 

It has been rather timidly suggested that we have an agency 
v/ithin our systems that might be utilized — the teachers them- 
selves. Would it not be possible to devise some honorable meth- 
od by which the superintendent might become more thoroughly 
acquainted with the activities and methods of those individuals 
whose principal attention is devoted to directing and elevating 
the standards of teaching? Of course, nothing should be per- 



UNITED EFFORTS 201 

mitted that would lessen the dignity or violate the ethics of the 
piofession. 

If none of these plans seems feasible or desirable, may teach- 
ers at least ask for a more sympathetic attitude on the part of 
the supervisor toward the difficult task of the teacher, a less 
arrogant evaluation of classroom proficiency, a more generous 
interpretation of the worth of the teacher? 

We need supervisors, we need all we can get, "to harmon- 
ize, to direct, to lead, to inspire," and we hope in presenting 
these views, we will not be accused of waving a "red flag" or 
of wishing to "to set up a dictatorship," and "to have control 
of details of operation." Both supervisors and teachers have 
the same interests at heart. Both are striving for the same 
great object — the good of the child. Service to children means 
service to teachers. Only the united efforts of supervisors and 
teachers can fit the child for the position he is to occupy in life, 
and the world be made a better place to live in; and the great 
aims of education be achieved. 

Reprinted from the April, 1920, issue of The Pennsylvania 
School Journal, page 438. 

Young students of supervision and young super- 
visors will do well to read both of these articles sev- 
eral times, and then to make sure that they know at 
least one corrective for each fault cited. That may 
prevent much bitterness of experience. 



14 



INDEX 



Acknowledgment of helpfulness, 18 
Adaptations and readjustments, 135 
Appreciation of assistance, 103 
Attitude toward supervisor, personal 

and professional, 97 
Authority to direct, 98 ; in super- 
vision, 89 

Beginning correctly, 24 

Boyce, Prof. Arthur Clifton, 146 

Business administrative ability, 156 

Cadet teaching, 67 

Child, development of the, 72 

Class, conduct of, 33 

Classification of teachers, 150 

Commendation, productive, 86 

Commending the commendable, 34 ; 

work, 40 
Condemnation before pupils, 95 ; vs. 

failure, 9 
Conference after visit, 35 ; time for, 

181 

Continuous teaching effort, absence 

of, 10 
Contradictory directions, 108 
Criticism by supervisor, manner of, 

27 ; constructive, welcomed, 198 

Daily difficulties, 173 ; notation of, 170 

Efficiency valuation systems, 142 

Equivalence of instruction, 157 

Estimates of teachers by superintend- 
ents, 177 

Ethical relations, 88 

Ethics of teaching, 29 

Excellences or defects, final judgment 
of, 113 ; degrees of, 147 ; table of, 
142 ; elements of, 53, 54 

Experience as a basis of teaching 
ability, 144 

Experienced teachers, 11 

Favoritism shown by supervisor, 192 

Grading of teachers, 141 ; of work, 15 

Harmony between principal and su- 
pervisor, 111 
Help, individual, 199 
Helpful suggestions, 13, 45 
Hill, Sallie, St. Paul, Minn., 190 
Hostility and opposition to supervisor, 
104 



Instruction, improvement of, 19 ; of 

old and new teachers, 145 
[nstructional opportunities, equality 

in, 161 
Invigorating instruction, 48 
Journal of Education, 190 
Judging Teachers, 58, 83 
Judgment, transmittal of, 23 

Koons, Carrie E., Allentown, Pa., 195 

Lesson planning before supervisor's 

visit, 41 
Lessons, written and oral, 162 

Marking, arbitrary, 152 

Meetings, general, 123 ; grade teach- 
ers, 122, 125, 130 ; lecture plan, 127 ; 
part-time, 129 

Methods, adoption and adaptation of, 
137 

Model teaching by supervisor, 79 

National Society for the Study of Ed- 
ucation, 146 

New and complete instruction a neces- 
sity, 164 

Observation blank, 51 

Observations of instruction, notation 
of, 22 

Observations of supervisor for discus- 
sion, 126 

Opinion, differences of, 91 

Over-specialized teaching, 78 

Pay and rating scales, 151 

Pennsylvania State Educational Asso- 
ciation meeting, 195 ; professional 
ethics, 90 

Personal likes and dislikes, 7 

Points of view of open-minded teach- 
ers, 20 

Principal as supervisor, 69, 112 

Problems for teachers' meetings, 128 

Procedure, definite, 138 

Professional growth of teacher and 
supervisor, 131 ; respect and consid- 
eration by teacher, 102 

Progress of work directed by super- 
vision, 42 

Protests from teachers, 189 

Pupils, development of the, 158 

Qualifications, difference in, 43 
Quality of instruction to be secured, 
159 



Incapacities of teachers, 77 
Independent room-teacher, 80 
Inspiration or irritation through su- 
pervision, 39 
Inspiring supervision, 62 



Rating, dissatisfaction with, 155 ; of 
teachers, 149 ; of superintendent, 
174, 175 ; of superintendent, public, 
176 ; of superintendent, variety of, 

178 



203 



204 



INDEX— Concluded 



Readjustment, discomfort of, 12 

Record of happenings during super- 
visor's visits, 65 ; of judgments of 
quality and value of instruction, 55 

Recognition of supervision by super- 
intendent, 165 

Recommendations and adaptation, 134 

Reference bureau, 110 

Relations virith supervisor, personal 
and professional, 99, 100 

Remuneration for extra meetings, 182 

Reports as recommendations, 57 ; to 
superintendent, monthly, 85 ; writ- 
ten or oral, 186, 187 

Resignation and submission of poor 
teachers, 101 

Responsibility, division of, 107 ; anal- 
ysis of, 114 ; of principals and su- 
perintendents, 153 

Round table discussions, 124 

Routine procedure or sing song teach- 
ing, 179 

Salary schedules, 143 

Scale of merits, supervisory, 68 

Schedule for recitation, 49 ; making, 

flexible plans in, 118 
School systems, large and small, 120, 

121 
Scientific experimentation and adapta- 
tion, 136 
Second trial for teachers, 16, 92 
Self -culture and training, 171 
Self-depreciation, 106 
Self-judgment by teachers, 64, 70, 71 
Self-possession of teachers, 38 
Self-supervision, 60, 63 
Shortcomings of a school or teacher, 

66 
Special teacher-supervisor, 73 
Special teaching, 76 
Specialization in teaching, beginning, 

75 
Standard tests, results of, 185 
Statistics on instruction, gathering, 52 
Student teacher and experienced 

teacher, 132 
Success, consciousness of, 94 
Suggestions to beginners, 169 ; new, 

47 
Superintendents' notes of visits, 50 



Supervision, arbitrary and autocratic, 
200 ; criticisms of, 191 ; defects of, 
194 ; effects of, 190 ; justified, 17 ; 
necessity of, 154 ; value of, 184 

Supervisor, check on, 84 ; contempt 
for, 105 ; as guide and inspiration, 
167 ; knowledge of methods and 
practices, 32 ; quality and qualifica- 
tions of, 26 ; rating power, 193 ; 
readymade opinions, 36 ; reports and 
recommendations, 56 ; suggestions 
and directions, 46 ; trained, 31 

Supervisory visits, length of, 116 

Surveillance vs. supervision, 61 

Syllabi, 180 

Teachers' criticism, inviting, 196 ; ef- 
ficiency, measuring of, 146 ; old and 
new, 44 ; rating, value in, 148 ; 
training, continuation school, 188 ; 
viewpoint on supervision, 195 ; work 
judged by supervisor, 93 

Teaching knowledge, dissemination of, 
163 

Time, distribution of, 115 

Training and experience of supervisor, 
192 ; continuation, 133 

United efforts of supervisors and 
teachers, 201 

Unity of purpose under one super- 
visor, 109 ; of school aims, 160 

Unsolved problems of supervision, 179, 
187 

Visits, freedom from, 185 ; frequence 
of, 21, 183 ; justifiable frequence of, 
14 ; of supervisor, notes of, 82 ; 
profitable and enjoyable, 168 ; pro- 
ductive frequency of, 74 ; program 
of, 81, 117 ; unannounced, 119 

Weaknesses and successes of teacher, 
172 

Women supervisors, 28; primary su- 
pervisors, 30 

Working ethics of supervision, 32 

Working overtime, 197 

Young teachers, preparatory stage, 
139 



